The Age of Frost
by ragnarok-and-roll-it
Summary: Frostiron. It's 1973. 19 year old Tony Stark, whose living on the road and out of his car with his best friend Pepper after a falling out with his father, falls into the glam rock scene courtesy of one beautiful and strange Loki Lauff, who lives dangerously and is more dangerous than Tony can even begin to imagine. Warnings for drugs, sex, violence, the slowest burn, & rock n roll.
1. Chapter 1

Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost?

_Fuck. _

Originally that 'fuck' was breathed out in an irritated smoke-white sigh on the part of one Tony Stark.

That was three weeks ago.

Tony Stark is damn good looking, and he knows it. He's gone from the fuck so skinny he fit neatly between the math textbook and the history textbook so outdated that it hadn't been updated since four years before segregation was outlawed, in a locker that smelled like mothballs and sweaty jock-straps, to a goddamn brick house. It didn't matter how much he liked star wars or machines or experimenting with them. He can kick the snot out of anyone.

Chicks dig that.

So much, in fact, that, at only nineteen, he's punched more v-cards than Bruce Lee had punched people in the face.

So the fact that his sort-of-maybe-kind-of-girlfriend is so stuck on this Loki Laughs and his Frosty calendars (and has been for a month!) when she should be stuck on him makes him want to switch professions, from professional V-card puncher to professional face-puncher.

"Did you know that he's _English_?'

Asks Pepper at least three times a week. And the way she says _'English' _sounds more like she's really asking if Tony knows that Loki Lauff is some kind of bonafide alien sex god from the planet Ass.

Tony starts picturing Yoda covered in writhing, wiggling penises and starts to feel slightly sick.

"I mean, outside of his record I've never really heard him talk, you know? I bet it sounds so cool, you know? And he plays like four instrum…."

Tony can see Yoda rising from the swamps of Dagobah covered in writhing, wiggling penises, swamp slime cascading off the heads and being flung all over the walls of his minds' eye.

"I think this Mary J is _English. _I could ream a dude for a scone." He says and physically cowers a little lower on the park bench, to keep the swamp discharge on the walls of his mind's eye to a minimum.

"And, like, I heard he, well, he writes all of the band's songs and it's all about this tragic character, it's like Shakespeare and he's so intellectual about his music…"

Tony closes his eyes, lights up, inhales, and returns to his thoughts about the be-cocked Yoda. At least it's not girl talk with Pepper. He'd taken them all the way to this secluded park bench under a bridge to smoke a J and hopefully get a base or two—like any Casanova would. It may have only been mids, but he couldn't help but feel like he was wasting his smoke.

"…and he's so _tall_!"

Pepper says _tall_ like, you know what? Tony doesn't care what she says it like because she can sit on it. Loki Toffee or whatever the hell he's called can be intellectual or english or made of goddamn stardust or be from the planet ass or whatever he wants to be, and Pepper can moon over him till time clocks out, but he cannot be _tall. _

All 5'8 of him feels ready to explode.

Tony thinks he must have teleported or something, because the next thing he knows he's standing by the duck pond and Pepper is calling after him. He feels her hand on his arm and shoves it off. She tries to talk to him but he doesn't want to hear it.

A part of Tony figures he should be used to coming up short.

The becocked Yoda in his minds' eye chortles at the pun and he bangs his head against the steering wheel.

'Bad brain!' He mutters to himself before tossing a "I hope you and the Iceman are happy together." At Pepper before trying to drive away. She's holding onto the door.

"Tony! Stop! The park's miles away from anywhere! What he fuck are you doing?" She calls and he shrugs before speeding out of the parking lot.

It takes Tony about three hours to realize what an asshole he was, but by then he's half asleep on the bar at some Tavern or another, with a bottle of beer half in his hand and half out. He's doing his damnedest to clean the place out. It's almost midnight by the time he remembers that he can't afford to do that anymore.

At this rate he's going to have to move to a new city just to be able to get into bars at all.

He bangs his forehead against the bar, hoping to concuss his animal brain into silence for at least fifteen minutes, and starts to plan his escape.


	2. Chapter 2

It turns out after hitting the sauce so hard that a steak would be jealous, Tony Stark becomes a real nowhere man.

His plan of escape had essentially consisted of pulling a runner, and then getting into his car and pulling a driver.

Tony isn't sure if language works like that, but he does know that every last inch of his body hurts.

The sun is bright, and the ground is hard, and his brilliant plan had pretty much been thrown out the window when, before he could even set foot on the bar's porch, a couple of guys had literally kicked him out the door.

It turns out the owner's friends didn't take kindly to his shit.

Tony looks like he's had a passionate love affair with a crowbar. He's limping and half of his face is swollen. He can hardly even figure out how to get into his car and he's just spent a half an hour digging around in the gravel of the parking lot for his keys. He swears half of the skin on his hands is gone.

He's driving somewhere but he's not sure where. And isn't that just the story of his life? He feels like he's gonna keel over any second, so when he sees the San Ardo diner pop up out of the grass like another weed in the middle of a sandy garden, he pulls into what he guesses is supposed to pass for a parking lot.

He also promptly passes out…only to yanked out of sleep god knows how long after by something banging against his car door.

After a moment to take stock of his confusion, Tony rolls down his car window to see a slender, middle aged woman with greying gold hair and an apron standing outside his car with her hands on her hips.

"You alright son?" She asks and Tony thinks thats a stupid question, but he keeps his thoughts to himself.

"I think?" He says and moving his lips causes the bottom one to re-split. He can taste blood and he grimaces.

"To heck you are, Jimmy Sellers says you've been parked out here all day. You been knocked out all this time?"

"Yes ma'am." Says Tony stiffly, without trying to move his bottom lip. He's been driving around south long enough to know this type of woman, and how you address them.

"Get out of that car, young man! First your going to clean yourself off. Then we'll see about getting you some food." Her skin has been turned to leather by the sun and it makes the blue of her eyes shocking. Tony doesn't know if he's ever seen anyone who looks exactly like her.

"I don't have any money. They probably took it, ma'am."

"Don't play the sympathy game with me, honey! They didn't take nothing you didn't owe Dick Amarillo and his tavern anyway. Oh yes, in this town of a couple hundred news flies. Don't think you can pull one over on Lucille Rainey!"

"I'm sorry ma-" Tony begins and the next thing he knows he's being bodily yanked out of his car by Lucille Rainey, a woman who doesn't look strong enough to lift a heavy sack of rice.

"And about that payment, a rough and tumble gentleman like yourself ever wash a dish?"

Tony begins to think back before realizing that a salt-of-the-earth woman like Lucille wouldn't appreciate any kind of answer along the lines of 'Daddy Stark had servants for that'.

"Yes, ma'am." He says. Lucille Rainey talks and talks as she shows him around the inside of her small diner. It's not jam-packed, but its comfortably full and reasonably clean. He manages to catch something about it belonging to her family before he's deposited in a small bathroom.

"Picking up strays again Lucille?" Tony hears someone say as he manages to steady himself against the sink.

"Oh sit on it, George."

"At least this one doesn't have rabies. That cat was foaming at the mouth. And the blood hound you found on the highway before that couldn't have smelled a raw steak if you dropped it on it's head."

"Ha ha George-"

Tony turns on the faucet and drowns out the noises of George and whoever else. He swears he can hear every pipe in the building creak as the water flows into the sink.

It gives him an idea.

Almost nothing makes Tony Stark happier than having an idea, so when he finally leaves the bathroom somewhat clean he feels pretty good and mostly human. In fact, he's five minutes to whistling as he strolls out into the dining room.

He doesn't know what could have happened over the course of the 20 minutes to turn everyone in the diner from disinterested or slightly bemused by him being there to clearly disappointed in him.

Tony doesn't know what he's done but he knows that look, and he doesn't like it. He feels the inclination to whistle curl up and die somewhere around his diaphragm.

"Young man!" Calls Lucille Rainey as she plonks a plate of pancakes so mammoth that just looking at it makes Tony's stomach cramp in front of a little boy half it's size. "Is your name Tony Stark?"

"Err…yeah? Yes, ma'am." He corrects.

"Is Howard Stark your Daddy?"

This time Tony isn't too stoned to realize that his anger is misplaced, and he simply nods.

"Why didn't you say so? The Stark scholarship for Science and Mathematics put one of my babies through college! He's an engineer for Stark Industries in Houston! You can have anything you like on the house!"

Firstly he realizes he must have read a lot of disappointment that wasn't there, because everyone seems just short of clapping for him. Secondly he realizes that the fact that he can't even escape the poltergeist of Howard Stark in a hick town (Population 600 and waning) in the middle of the desert in California makes him want to burn the place down.

Thirdly he realizes that he's starving.

"I told you that was that Howard's boy." Says the voice Tony recognizes as George and he looks over to find a man with a round beer belly and a bushy mustache. He's like if Santa Claus fell out of a bottle of whiskey every christmas.

"Thank you ma'am." He says and sits down in an empty booth in the far corner. He starts absently playing with the silverware. Whether he likes it or not he's like his dad and his hands are itching for something they can play with, take apart, and put back together. They'll settle for nervously fondling cutlery.

"Rumor has it he cut you off. That true, boy?" Asks George and Tony clenches whatever he's got in his hands until they turn white.

"Now George, mind your potatoes-"

"I heard he cut you off till you get your act together, and judging by the mess you made of Dick Amarillo's place last night I'd say you're doing just fine!"

Tony feels almost euphoric knowing he's going to tear this George a new one. He's halfway out of his booth to rip the guy's mustache clean off his face when something clangs to the floor next to his foot. He looks down and sees that it's a knife. He then looks at his hands and sees the fresh blood welling up. He realizes that he was holding the knife the wrong way, and suddenly he just feels tired. He crumples back into the booth.

"Can I have some pancakes, Mrs. Rainey?" He asks as he presses his bloody hand against the table top, just so he doesn't have to look at it.

"Surely, you'll have to wait a bit though, I've got two orders before yours and Peggy's out sick today."

The name Peggy turns to Pepper in his head and before Tony knows what he's doing he's ready to run out of the restaurant and start looking. It's been about a day since he last saw her and god knows where she's ended up. He's halfway to the door when he feels a hand on his arm.

"Now, young man, you've had a bit of a time. You sit and eat your food."

"But Pepper-"

"Whatever it is we'll worry about it after you've got some food in you. I even set down the local paper for you, give you something else to think on while you wait."

"Yesterday my…friend Pepper and I had a fight and I haven't seen her since!" He insists, unable to keep the vulnerability out of his voice and Lucille Rainey's eyes soften.

"All them rich boys are alike, ungrateful little sons-of-bitches. Can't be bothered to do a thing right." Mutters George and Tony is about to do something drastic, but the look in Lucille's eyes sends him right back to his booth.

"I'll call Al Ruiz for you, he's the Police Chief. He's always got an eye out. You sit down and relax honey. I'll take care of everything."

For the first time in a long time Tony Stark genuinely wants to thank someone for something. Before he can do it however, the object of his gratitude has bustled away, and is rapping one obnoxious whiskey soaked Santa Claus on top of his bald head.

Tony is starting to feel like things might just start looking up. A part of him realizes its somewhat irrational, but he feels like there's nothing Lucille Rainey doesn't stick her nose into that dares to not straighten itself out.

Then he opens the paper and promptly slams his head against the table top.

Loki Lauff has caught the local parish's eye as a corruptor of youth and wager of grievous sin on white bread american ideal. There is a nearly page long article listing his offenses and showing pictures of him in the kind of outfits that would probably have gotten the stuffing kicked flat out of him if he wore them in any other circumstance.

Before Tony remembers that he hates the guy on principal, he's kind of intrigued.

His eyes fall on a picture of the long, lithe man with his arms outstretched and head thrown back, his collar bones and the tendons of his neck pulled taught in stark relief. His long black and blue hair is almost in a bee hive and he's got glittering gem-studded and almost sculptural pieces covering each of his nipples. His nails are painted silver and the silver peters out halfway to his elbows. He's painted on a pair of the fullest red lips Tony has ever seen and he…he hasn't got any eyebrows!

Tony is only stuck on the lack of eyebrows for a moment. Who does that? People need eyebrows! They are the cornerstone of any decent face! The captions, proclaiming the man a homosexual and a deviant, quickly take his attention however.

He feels the need to do a victory dance. A homosexual would never be interested in Pepper! His internal victory dance skids off of cliff onto jagged rocks when he realizes that Pepper is going to most likely murder him for being such an asshat when she's found, and then it won't matter how gay or not not gay Loki Lauff is.

Then he comes across the part of the article where it warns parents against letting their innocent children attend Loki's ungodly smut-fest, in Los Angeles, in approximately one month's time.

Tony's victory dance rolls out of the jagged stones that killed it and is resurrected in a flash of heavenly light. If he can get Pepper tickets to that ungodly smut-fest she'll have no choice but to love him forever!

Tony shoots a smirk straight at George just to piss him off.

Howard Stark's money behind him or not, let it never be said that Tony Stark is not a genius.

* * *

Review Replies

SoramimiIsInWonderland: Yo wish be my command.

Madtrek: Thanks so much! This thing is actually epic in length and slowly kind of forming it's own universe. The plot gets really cray.


	3. Chapter 3

"Tony, can you come in here?"

Lucille calls from the kitchen, and considering that she sounds exasperated and borderline sardonically amused rather than worried or in the middle of earth-shaking sobs, Tony doesn't think he has to de-spring his step any.

The diner is small and in a matter of seconds he's standing next to Lucille Rainey, whose got her hand pressed against the phone.

"There's been a bit of a problem-" She starts, and stops herself mid sentence when Tony's heart physically almost seems to fall through the floor. "Nothing like that, honey. They've got Pepper at the station and she's fine, but there's been kind of a misunderstanding-"

"Misunderstanding?"

"Well, one of Al's boys picked her up early this morning. Found her crying on the side of the road. At first they thought something bad happened, but when she kept insisting she knew you personally and that you'd been driving her around, well, I mean— you have to understand Tony, that does sound pretty crazy-"

"What did they do with her!?"

"Now, you relax. I told you already, she's at the station and she's been there all day-"

"They arrested her!?"

"They're just holding her for now-"

"I need to get her out immediately!"

"Tony-"

"Oh my god they've probably-"

"Now don't you go using the lord's name in vain Anthony Stark!"

Tony felt the sarcastic reply bubbling against the backs of his teeth, but he could tell from the look in Lucille Rainey's eyes that she meant it and expected an apology.

"Sorry ma'am." He says and she nods before taking her hand off of the receiver and pressing the phone back to her ear.

"Now, you've really done it this time Albert Ruiz." She says sternly with a wink at Tony and he might think he's actually just a little bit in love with her.

"You've probably gone and terrorized that poor girl for nothing at all. Made her out to be a liar for no good reason. I've got Tony Stark on the line right now. Here."

Lucille Rainey drops the phone into Tony's hand and he stares at it.

"I'm sure you know how to use a telephone."

Tony presses it to his ear. "Umm, ah, police? Hi?"

"For pete's sake! And I thought you were smarter than that blood hound."

"Hi, This is Tony Stark, ah, you can let my friend Pepper out. Turns out, funny story, she's not some crazy homeless chick pretending to know me; I mean, not that I could blame a wacko homeless chick for pretending to know me because, of all the people you could pretend to know I'm probably in the top five percent world wide of people who you would want-"

"Stop talking about how great you are and come get me out of here, jerk off!" He hears Pepper call and he breaks out in a grin.

"Comin atcha dollface, soon as your pancakes are done I'm booking." He yells into the receiver and he hears the police chief groan.

"Nobody even says dollface anymore, what are you, fifty?" She yells back.

"If by that you mean 'Am I a distinguished gentleman?', then yeah."

"Tony, I swear I am going to-"

"Do you or do you not want pancakes?"

He hears Pepper mumble something on the other end of the line and then he hears police chief Al Ruiz repeat what he'd said.

"Can I get those pancakes in a box, Mrs. Rainey?" Tony asks and the woman nods. He leans back into the phone. "Tell Pepper I'll be there before she can think of another thing to call me."

Police Chief Al Ruiz had started to say something, but Tony had slammed the phone back down before a full syllable could escape.

"You've certainly got a way with people, Tony."

"I'm plenty charming, Mrs. Rainey." He insists and she shakes her head with a fond smile. Before he knows it he's got a box of pancakes in his hands, and directions to the local police station in his head.

"Can I take the newspaper, too?" He asks and she puts it on top of his pancake box and ruffles his hair.

"It's that Loki Lauff isn't it? The whole world's crazy over him. But, then again, I guess the world's always crazy over something. He'd be a handsome boy if he didn't tart himself up like that. It's strange."

Tony says nothing.

"I want the both of you back here right away, Tony Stark. No more trouble."

"Yes ma'am." He says and limps out of the diner.

* * *

Review Replies:

tamtamsam: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That's so beautiful.

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AN: I reedited this while watching Gangnam Style. If you haven't seen it yet, you should youtube that shit.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony has noticed that a lot of women seem to have this innate thing for things that look like they need help; and he wouldn't say he's necessarily exploiting it if he makes his limp more of a pained stagger when he walks into the police station, which is more like a basement that has been inexplicably detached from its house with a desk and three holding cells glued up inside it.

He can tell that Pepper is angry, but after taking a look at him she's definitely more worried than mad. He counts it as a win.

"You look whacked out! What happened?"

Before Tony can milk it Al Ruiz opens his mouth and Tony knows his only out was just taken out back of the station and shot in the head.

"Drank Dick Amarillo out of house and home and then couldn't pay for it. They didn't give him anything he didn't deserve." Says the police chief and Tony can feel A) that the man doesn't like him and more importantly B) That Pepper doesn't like him that much right now either.

"So, it's back to this again, huh Tony?"

"Look, I'm cutting you loose, and I got you pancakes. Can you read me the riot act without Smokey over here breathing down our-"

"Yeah, let's piss off the cops-"

"_Cop_, actually-"

"After this you are driving me straight home! And then I never want to talk to you again!"

Al Ruiz has unlocked the cell and Pepper stomps toward Tony, takes the box of pancakes out of his arms, and then completes her exit.

Tony looks toward Al Ruiz and The Police Chief looks right back at him. Tony doesn't know what his mouth is about to do but it's gonna be outta-

"Don't say a word to him, dillweed! Don't give him any reason to arrest you."

Tony waves at the police chief before sulkily dragging his bruised foot out of the station, right behind Pepper, who has already climbed into the passenger seat of his car through the open window. She appears to be stuffing pancakes down her throat, and Tony wonders if she's even tasting them.

He puts his key in the ignition and starts to drive.

"I can't fucking believe you, Tony. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Tony's default mode is sarcasm. He keeps his mouth shut.

"You ever been to wherever the hell this is before? No! And Neither have I! How could you just drive off and leave me in the middle of nowhere and nothing where I don't know anyone? And then go get drunk! You promised you were done with that shit! You wanna hit a hard 25 and die in the bottom of a bottle? You are the world's biggest asshat, Tony Stark!"

The world's most pregnant silence ensues.

"Look, babe, I-"

"Don't call me that!" It would have been more threatening if her mouth wasn't stuffed with pancakes, but Tony gets the point.

"I know that what I did was…was…"

"Was what, Tony?"

"…"

"_Tony._"

"Pretty shitty."

"Understatement of the century."

"Yeah, I know, but men are like that, you know? You gotta take the bad with the good, so I want to do something good for you."

"Unless you've figured out time travel I don't see what you could do."

Tony feels the newspaper under his feet and maneuvers until he's got it in his hands. He tries to pass it to Pepper and ends up successfully dunking it in syrup. Pepper watches him squirm.

"There's an article about Loki Laughs in there. What this local preacher has to say is pretty screwy, but only read the last paragraph."

Tony knows the second that Pepper has read the relevant sentence.

Her high pitched scream of glee nearly causes him to crash his car.

"Loki Lauff is coming to L.A!" She cries again and again.

"Are we going Tony?" She asks and he smirks.

"Depends on if you're still here Pep." He says and her face pales to white. Tony wonders if she is actually going to kill him.

"Pull the car over." She demands and Tony does so. He wants it to be known that he faced his death bravely.

"Get out." She says, the second they are pulled over and Tony does. Pepper follows with the box of pancakes in one hand and the syrupy newspaper in the other.

The next thing Tony knows the sensations of his balls being turned inside out and the taste of the most delicious pancakes he's ever had are strangely juxtaposed. Then he realizes he's laying on the ground and that howling voice is his.

"You…you kicked me in the balls!" He says minutes later and his voice is at least an octave too high.

"How are we going to afford the tickets Tony?"

"Tickets?" His voice is still too high, and he's seeing sounds and he thinks he might throw up.

"For Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost. Unless you were lying." The unspoken threat that she'll squash his testicles out of existence if he's lying is enough to have Tony cupping his family jewels and wondering if there actually could be a god, for just a second.

"There's this…this…this diner down the road. Piping's all screwed. I'll fix it and collect the bread. We're just a couple of odd jobs away from all of your dreams coming true, babe."

Pepper is sitting on the ground, unconcerned as you please, gingery hair glinting in the sun, licking syrup off of her fingers like a lazy cat.

"And you know how it goes, one place finds somebody with half a brain willing to teach a toaster it's place on the cheap and suddenly everybody in town's got something they need fixed up."

Pepper does know how it goes. They've been doing it all over California for a month and a half, and what she doesn't understand is how Tony still doesn't know. It's his name that gets the gigs. Everyone wants Howard Stark's son's hands on their stuff.

In Mendocino a man had poured nine entire cans of beans under the hood of is car and acted like it's invalided state was the mystery of the century. Tony didn't bat an eyelash.

If it all didn't make Pepper so sad she'd be impressed.

"Your tool kit's in the trunk, boss." She says instead of thinking about it. She watches as Tony's entire face lights up. He tries to spring off of the ground before his body's ready and if it wasn't for her, he wouldn't've made it up at all.

"I'm gonna start wearing a full suit of armor around you." He groans as she helps him waddle toward his car.

"Like a knight?" She asks as she opens his car door for him.

"No, man, chivalry's dead."

Pepper shoots a contemplative look at his crotch and Tony feels a physical pang of agony. He swears he feels his balls breathe a sigh of relief when she closes his doors.

"Like one of these." He taps the red outer-door of his car and strokes it absently as he Pepper gets in the passenger side. "Only it'll fly. And shoot lasers. And have a clam bake button in the helmet I can touch with my tongue! And it will automatically electrocute crotch-shot taking maniacs."

They share a laugh, and they have spent so much time together that they nearly share a singular kind of bark.

"Come on Captain Clam Bake, it's time to go fix the plumbing. And then go fix this deadly 'I don't have tickets to see Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost' problem I got. "

"Heroically!" Insists Tony as he puts the key in the ignition.

"Yeah man, heroically."

* * *

tamtamsam: Thanks! Tony's kind of my favorite. I write him with so much love. :)


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing Tony realizes about Loki Lauff is that his fans are quite literally insane.

And he hasn't even gotten to the concert yet. He nearly got killed by a hoard just buying the tickets.

And it wasn't even a hoard of huns or stampeding elephants.

As far as he could tell, it was a hoard of mostly girls between the ages of 16 and 25 in sci-fi heels with blue and orange and green hair, glitter going from their eyelashes to eyebrows, and clothing in colors he wasn't even sure existed.

There was also one guy, in a business suit and heels.

Tony was pretty sure the guy grabbed his ass when he wasn't looking.

He also wasn't sure whether he was wearing the business suit or the heels ironically.

Needless to say, all of this had him less than stoked for the actual event. The show is tomorrow night, and he's been inhaling cheeseburgers ever since he bought the tickets.

So that would be four days of him working toward a glorious death-by-cheeseburger.

In fact, he currently has three on the way and Pepper is looking at him almost sadly.

"Don't like your malted?" He asks and Pepper shakes her head.

"Pepppppeeerrrrrr." He trills and she says nothing again.

"Is it because he's queer?"

"What?"

"Your Loki Laughs-a-lot. You afraid he'll like me better?"

"Tony-"

"Because, I couldn't really blame him. I mean, look at this face. I mean, and it's attached to the rest of me, which is pretty friggin ace—"

"Do you have something against the year 1980?"

And Tony is lost. He's kind of been calling himself Captain Clam Bake in his head since Pepper laid the title on him. He thinks that if he's Captain Clam Bake than Pepper is The Loop Thrower.

"Because sometimes I think you hate it so much you don't want to live to see it."

"I haven't had a drink in three days! And you were pretty rocked too on Tuesday so I don't see-"

The waitress plonks down his cheeseburgers and Pepper's fries and cuts out. Tony attacks his food with unholy glee.

"Man, replacing beer with cheeseburgers isn't—"

"Shhhhh." Says Tony through a mouthful of burger. Half-masticated meat falls out from between his teeth and Pepper grimaces.

"A chorus of heavenly angels are singing in my head and I can't hear them over the sound of you worrying too much."

Pepper sullenly dips a fry in her malted and lets it go.

"So, did you know he's like a mime?" She asks.

"Who?"

"Loki Lauff!"

"I thought he was some sort of queer space alien musical genius shakespearian tragedy thing."

"Well, he is! But before that they say he was a mime! They also say he was a buddhist monk! He also answers all of his fan mail himself! Every last letter! He really appreciates his fans you know and…"

Tony nods in a place he suspects might be relevant before turning his attention back to the gloriously hot and cheesy burger in his hands. Once Pepper gets started on Loki she could go past the end of the world. Possibly the universe.

He thinks that she still doesn't have the kind of feelings for Loki that he has for cheeseburgers.

* * *

Sen2TOS9: Fanx! :)


	6. Chapter 6

The anticipation is eating Tony alive.

He's seen pictures and posters and look-a-likes of Loki Lauff nearly smother L.A. in a cloud of androgyny and strange colors and partial nudity. It's like the bastard is everywhere.

He doesn't know it he wants the concert to start or he wants it to be over with but he does know that if he has to stand in line for one more fucking minute he's going to literally explode.

"Tony." A far away voice says. It's more like a buzzing fly than anything and he hardly hears it.

"Tony." This time it comes with a gentle poke in the ribs. He looks to see Pepper standing next to him, looking worried.

She's dressed in something white that's kind of like a dress only it glows ungodly bright and half of her body is covered in glitter. She's got on one of the slightly bee-hivey Loki hairdos he remembers from the preacher's article in San Ardo.

The worried look denting the purple swirls on her painted face is borderline surreal.

"I'm just mellowed from that J. Relax, Dollface." He says, even though if they don't open the doors soon he's going to have to do something drastic.

"I told you, you should have put something on."

Tony looks around him. It turns out being the only guy in denim in a crowd of people who think they are human disco balls is not the most comfortable feeling. He's like a sore thumb wearing a neon sign. He looks like a narc.

"Am I embarrassing you, babe?"

Pepper shakes her head. "Well, you could unbutton your shirt a bit more or some-"

"You could definitely do that."

Tony looks behind him, and if he wasn't so bad with names and faces he'd swear it was that dude who tried to steal handfuls of his ass last time. He looks back at Pepper and she's glaring daggers at the guy.

Tony smirks. "You heard the man." He looks at Pepper. "Unbutton me!" She rolls her eyes and undoes a single button.

"Happy boss?" She grits out and he undoes the rest of the shirt and throws it up in the air. It doesn't come down.

Tony looks up and sees what could be a guy or a chick sitting on the roof with his shirt draped over his head.

"Hey!" But before he can finish the figure is gone in a flash of pale skin.

"Shit! That's my only shirt!" He cries and the next thing he knows there's silvery white glitter falling from the sky. For a single hysterical second he wonders if its snowing in LA. Snowing glitter?

Then he realizes its largely focused on him and whoever happens to be around him, and it's petering out. The dickweed that stole his shirt thew it off the roof on him.

Tony's got pearlescent glitter in his hair. It clings where sweat from being trapped in the crowd has clumped his eyelashes. His chest and shoulders are glistening with glitter and sweat and suddenly he feels much more at home. He looks up at the roof to at least flip the guy the bird or something, but he's already gone.

"That was nice of him." Says Pepper. "Getting you in the spirit."

"For what, a white christmas?"

"Sit on it Ton-OH MY GOD THE DOORS JUST OPENED!"

Tony grips Pepper so tightly that he's digging in his nails as they're buffeted toward the doors.

If it didn't hurt so badly she would smile.


	7. Chapter 7

The opening band is some chick with a gap tooth, sitting on stage alone playing a guitar and warbling about how she likes her weed exotic.

While Tony totally agrees, he doesn't think she counts as a band.

She's either too drunk or not drunk enough to be good. The audience definitely isn't drunk enough to not notice.

Halfway through her set some girl who looks to be about nine starts screaming for Loki Lauff. The next thing Tony knows he's kind of afraid it's about to get violent. The next next thing he knows Pepper is screaming like she's been possessed by the devil.

"Come on jerkoff, if you don't cut the fashionably late shit someone's gonna get killed."

Tony has narrowly avoided getting his feet impaled on a pair of criminally tall heels when suddenly every light in the entire venue is killed.

There is a moment of collective silence, like the break before the storm, and Tony can't breathe. He feels himself being shifted and moved by the crowd. Usually being lost in a haze of smoke is his preferred state of being, but here he feels claustrophobic, and blind, and he doesn't know where his body is going. In a brief moment of panic he can't help but wonder if the dark ate Pepper.

"Pepper!" He calls out and he swears at least three guys elbow him in the ribs, and someone pinches his ass.

Apparently silence is some kind of unspoken code at these things.

In the darkness a single dissonant, eerie note on an out-of tune piano is pounded over and over and over again. Every arrhythmic tap sends a chill shooting down his spine. It's like his every bone is a stretch of blackboard with a single claw-like fingernail digging trenches across its surface.

Every last one of Tony's hairs is standing on end and he's nearly crossed the line from fidgeting into shivering when, an eternity later, a single beam of blinding white light shoots clear through the void of darkness and silence.

It slices through the audience in staggering waves. Tony can see bits and flashes of things he can't process. He feels dizzy. He doesn't know where to look, so he closes his eyes.

'Open your eyes." Says a soft voice and Tony feels it linger in the shell of his ear as his eyelids fly open.

The stage is empty. Tony's confused. Then he notices everyone around him gasping and pointing upwards and when his eyes follow their hands Tony forgets how to breathe.

There is a man, naked as the day he was born, bathed in white light, and bound in gold ropes and leather, hanging from the ceiling hanging just out of arms reach. Tony reaches his hands up anyway.

"Hello Darling." Says Loki Lauff again, in that soft dangerous voice, as if with every word he's somehow daring you to do something outrageous.

The crowd goes absolutely wild.

"Now sssssssh." Says the man and they all fall dead silent.

Tony wonders if he's some sort of Jedi or something, because he has never seen that work at another concert in his entire life. At other concerts the band goes "How are you dudes tonight?" And apparently the audience can only communicate through incoherent vowels, because that's all they do.

Loki Lauff exists outside of that universe, in a single beam of blue light in the void, lounging in a leather hammock like it's a red velvet bedspread.

The thought of that skin against the red, red like his car, the thought of all that white skin and those long limbs spread over the hood of his car—

"Fuck." Says Tony and, once again, at least four people elbow him.

"Maybe…" Says Loki Lauff and the audience screams. He peers down through a hole in the strips of leather and his eyes are green and lined in something so black that it turns the whites of his eyes luminous and his skin to marble.

A long hand reaches down and Tony reaches up. That single shock of white skin turned blue at the wrists and tapering down to impossibly slender fingers makes Tony ache. He's standing on tip toes and the crowd is trying to push him down to get at Loki first but he won't let them and the tips of their fingers are a hairsbreadth away in the blue light—

Loki snatches his hand away. Tony wants to bang his head against the floor.

"…later." Loki nearly purrs and it takes Tony a good twenty seconds to remember that he was finishing a thought from earlier. "This has got to be something to remember. I'm going to take this one slow."

The audience screams and this time Loki doesn't stop them. He rolls around in his hammock, basking and stretching like a cat in the sun.

It's not until Tony catches a glimpse of what he think might be the single biggest cock he's seen in his entire life that he realizes that the void has suddenly become peppered with mirrors, and light is spilling forth like water in every direction.

"Jonce?" The cat calls from his leather perch and suddenly the room is filled with thunderous melodic crash and bellowing of a church organ. It nearly shakes the walls and Loki seems to roll in the sounds like he can physically feel them. Tony vaguely registers something happening on stage, but he can't look away from Loki.

"Let's be sensible and start at the beginning, hmmm Jonce?"

"Cool-city, yeah?" Says the so-called-Jonce, presumably. Tony doesn't have a fuck to give him.

"Track one off of the Rise and Fall of Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost: Five Lifetimes."

Tony swears the room drops twenty degrees and he can see his breath as, from somewhere far away, someone begins to drum.


	8. Chapter 8

Someone has got Tony pinned against the stage.

He's tall and got a hand on each of his hips and is grinding against him. Tony's not sure if he's reacting or not. He can feel glitter sliding down his torso, face, and arms in trails, caught in his sweat.

One of his shoes is missing.

He's got one hand gripping the top of the stage and a girl he's never seen before that has purple dripping out of her hair is clinging to the other. He's had a hit or two of at least nine different joints people have been passing around, and he's sure one of them had a sprinkle or eleven of something extra in it, because he can see the bass line and it's bathing the stage in flashes of red. Everything feels wonderful. A part of Tony's brain keeps vaguely worrying at his two possibly broken toes.

He feels stubble against his ear.

"Want up, puppy?"

"Up where?" Tony asks and he feels a chuckle brush against his cheek like thick fingers.

Suddenly he's on top of broad shoulders and the thickest head of gold hair he's ever seen is tickling his stomach, and sending sparks shooting up and down his spine.

He moans and he feels the body below him shake a little as the man chuckles. Tony feels like he's on top of a volcano.

"You're a strong volcano." He tells the man beneath him and he feels another full body chuckle.

"Rumble rumble rumble." Says Tony.

"You're too adorable for your own good." Says the volcano and Tony turns his eyes to the stage, which he now has a perfect view of.

"Want to be a pal and hold this for me?" Tony feels a cup being put in one of his hands. He smells it. Beer.

"Such a puppy." Says the volcano and Tony downs what's left in the cup and tosses it somewhere.

Tony suddenly feels something like cold and realizes that whatever Loki is playing on acoustic guitar, alone in a single beam of light center stage, feels like winter.

"Daughter Death waits in the wings."

And before he knows it he and the entire audience are singing it back to Loki, in an almost reverent whisper.

"Speaks of senseless things."

As Tony sings his hands wind into the mane of golden hair between his legs. It scratches his palms and he can't help but let out a long, low groan in the eons of silence between Loki's call and the audience's answer.

Suddenly Loki's eyes are on him and Tony doesn't know if he's hot or cold, but he's burning with something. He flings out a hand.

"Her script is you and me…" Whispers Loki and the audience bellows

"BOY!"

The strength of it shakes Tony. He's not sure if he's getting hard or not, but he feels hands creeping up his thighs and Loki's looking right at him and then suddenly everything starts vibrating again.

He doesn't know how long it takes for him to figure out that the man beneath him is laughing again.

"Like that Puppy?"

Tony guesses that either he's kind of hard or the guy is referring to something that he couldn't give half a fig for because…

The band comes cashing in around Loki and suddenly he's smashing the acoustic guitar to bits and ripping his costume to shreds. He's taken off his patent green leather heels and is using their razor thin points to split the seams of his shirt and Tony doesn't even know what noises are coming out of his mouth.

Even without the heels Loki's legs go on for eons.

His pale skin is revealed in slashes, pale bleeding out into the world through cuts in the silvery green material he'd been wearing.

The banging and strumming and wailing is apocalyptic as Loki peels the tattered remains of his outfit from his body and collapses to the stage with a dramatic, almost victorian faint.

A single one of his white hands reaches for the microphone, which rolls right into his fingertips, and suddenly everyone is screaming.

Loki seems to bellow every note on every scale in quick succession, let out in a primal howl as he crawls, naked and gleaming and make-up smeared across his face, toward the edge of the stage, right toward Tony.

Tony feels a thousand other hands and arms trying to push him out of the way, but he holds firm. He's going to touch Loki Lauff and nothing is going to fucking get in the—

His brain derails as wet heat encloses around two of his outstretched fingers. His eyes follow the source of the heat and nearly fall out of his head.

Red, wrecked, lips with rouge smeared halfway across them are wrapped around his fingers and the flat of a tongue is…is….writhing against their soft fleshy pads and flicking his knuckles in time with the drums.

The bass suddenly looks like lightning and Loki has started to hum into the fucking microphone while sucking his fingers like they're candy and he can suck the sweet out.

The audience is humming with him and Tony feels like his body is gone and he exists solely within that droning hum.

When that mouth is gone and the hum ends in a screaming 'oh' Tony feels like he's been unplugged.

Loki winks at him before strutting toward the other end of the stage and Tony falls off of the man's shoulders. He hardly feels it. He doesn't even realize that he's fallen until two people are helping him up.

"I am Loki." He says, back to the audience and head over one shoulder. He's naked and lanky and pale and smeared with paint and completely unconcerned. He looks like he could step into the air and float away. "And the Age of Frost is upon you!"

Tony's throat is raw but he still screams. The audience's collective scream is deafening.

"You're welcome." Loki drawls before sauntering off stage, long black hair waving like a dark banner behind him as he saunters away. The band follows.

Tony and the audience have been screaming for an encore for what feels like years when suddenly Tony feels a hand on his shoulder. He follows the sensation to a red glove and a suit jacket that looks something like victorian wallpaper if it had dropped acid and been hit by a truck.

"You're wanted back stage, Jack." Tony hears and he follows the vaguely british sound to a fat, mustached face.

"But what about the encore?" Asks Tony and the man's smile splits his mustache almost in half.

"You must be new, eh Jack? Greener than a tree in spring seems to be how he likes 'em though."

Tony doesn't know what to say. He thinks about telling the man that his name isn't Jack before deciding that it doesn't really matter.

"Follow me if it pleases the court." Says the man and Tony does as he asks. He's led through the crowd and out a door he didn't even know was there to a ladder on the side of the building, leading to the roof.

"Says he'll be up there when time suits him, got that Jack?"

Tony nods. He looks dumbly between the man and the ladder.

"Well, up you get." He says and Tony does what he does best, he puts one foot in front of the other and almost manages not to fall flat on his ass.

* * *

Thanks all for your lovely reviews! :)


	9. Chapter 9

Tony doesn't know how long he's been on the roof, but it's been long enough for him to sober up enough to realize that he's half naked, covered in sweat and glitter, and that he's ditched Pepper for the second time.

"But she'll have to understand." Tony says to no one. If Loki Lauff had called her back stage—er—up roof— she'd've ditched him in half a second. Tony's got no doubt about that, and now that he's seen the man play he can understand why. He sits on the edge of the roof and lets his calves and feet dangle as if swinging on a hinge.

The fact that the city of Los Angeles bustles around him unaware of what's about to happen seems almost impossible to Tony.

"Come on, Loki." His voice is raw from singing at the top of his lungs. "I haven't even met you and you're already driving me nuts."

Tony is ready to scratch his skin off. He feels like the wait is steadily killing him. He'd moved from hysterically wondering what he was even going to say to the man to contemplating throwing himself off the roof just to escape the wait.

"Quite the view, isn't it?"

Tony knows that voice and he's going to die and he can feel his heart punching his kidneys and some kind of inhuman noise trying to bust open his teeth and escape and when he looks down at the grey trashed street he thinks 'What view, exactly? England must be really goddamn dismal if this is Loki Lauff's idea of a view'.

And then he looks over and sees the man himself standing by the one door leading to the roof. He's wrapped in a silvery fur coat and his black hair is slicked back behind his ears, but poking out in spikes which spill onto the fur. A green and silver cigarette holder as long as a child's arm is dangling from one of his long white hands, and Tony can suddenly see him on the front of a Vodka bottle.

Then he realizes that Loki isn't talking about the street at all. Tony suddenly finds himself wondering if his mother was right about the devil after all.

Tony swears he can see a city of gold in those eyes. A city where the rivers run with wine so old it's nearly dust.

A chill runs down his spine and he swears he can feel one of those long hands scratch playfully against his skin, mapping whatever's beneath and turning it to simple sensation.

"If you like concrete." Says Tony, because even when he's too stunned to think the sass rolls off him like oil on a duck, and if he takes his time walking toward Loki, and walks like he's shedding invisible layers of cloth just to watch those green eyes burn, well…

"You look familiar." Says Loki Lauff as one of his impossibly long hands curls around Tony's side, the thumb nearly hooking his waist and touching his back and his long fingers sear lines against his spine.

He is impossibly tall, each line of his body stretching on longer than the last, and Tony wonders what the hell they feed them in England.

"It's funny," Says Tony and his glib falls flat. His voice has been cracked open and split, desire is oozing thick between his teeth.

"What's funny?" Loki's voice is half a whisper and those slender fingers are tracing the slim, barely there muscles beneath Tony's darker skin, the nails scraping so lightly Tony almost can't feel them, and it's like a whole new kind of buzz.

"I was just thinking the same about you." Says Tony and suddenly his hands are being pulled through fur and through silk and against cool, naked skin. The hands around his wrists are long and slender and strong, they nearly dwarf his own, and something about the power he can feel thrumming there sends Tony's brain straight off line.

"How old are you?" Asks Loki and it takes Tony a good few seconds to realize that he asked anything at all.

"Ah…umm….19." He finally manages and suddenly there's a hand the size of his skull curling in the hairs at the nape of his neck and tilting his head all the way back and a chuckle against his throat. The brush of lips is like a brand.

"You're just a baby."

Tony wants to make some kind of retort but suddenly he discovers that every nerve in his entire body is connected to some spot behind his ear that Loki is worrying at with his teeth.

He feels the fur of Loki's coat sticking to his overheated skin and a hand slowly curl around his entire hip and this slow burn is unlike anything he's ever felt. Those fingers tap thoughtfully at his ass cheek, in some unknown rhythm, and Tony feels himself disappearing inside it.

"I had considered having you right here, on this roof."

For a second Tony swears he's gone blind.

"But after hearing the noises you make I don't think I could bear to keep you quiet."

Suddenly Tony realizes that someone is moaning and whining like a bitch in heat and he thinks that he must have gone deaf hours ago, because how could he not have heard the sounds coming out of his own goddamn mouth.

"_Oh _**_god_**_." _ He breathes out as two fingers close around his nipple and _tug _and—

Tony almost feels criminally cheated for not knowing about that before, or he will later when he's not too busy keening and close to sobbing.

"Yes?" Asks Loki with an expression like he's making a clever joke, and Tony wants to understand it, but he wants those hands back on him even more. Suddenly Loki's smoking again from that ridiculous cigarette holder. It's dangling from between his fingers and Tony wants to be that bit of silver and green more than he's wanted to be anything in his entire life.

He can't breathe.

"Got a name, baby?"

Tony thinks he must have one. In fact he knows he must. He wonders if he left it somewhere. "Ah…ummm…Tony." He says.

"Oooh. Italian?" Asks Loki and the way he says it combined with the lustful gaze he shoots solely at Tony's crotch makes Tony suddenly feel like he's standing naked in front of the entire state of California.

And that they're going to eat his penis.

Tony isn't about to correct Loki.

He manages to stay still, but he's blushing like a child caught out of bed too late. Suddenly his bare feet are incredibly interesting.

Tony's always been the hunter, remember? Punched more V cards than Bruce Lee punched people in the face, remember?

When Loki looks at him like he's going to swallow him whole Tony forgets how to breathe.

"Oh, I'm going to enjoy you." Purrs Loki and Tony doesn't know what to do with himself.

"You ever been to the Bellisade, baby?"

The most expensive luxury hotel in the city of Los Angeles? Tony was conceived there. He had one of his childhood birthdays there. He doesn't remember which one, but he knows it happened. One of his nannies told him.

His warm brown eyes flicker from beneath his eyelashes before returning to his toes.

"No." He says softly and when Loki smiles Tony is reminded of a shark.

He is suddenly conscious that his body rushes with fresh blood, and the only thing separating it from Loki can be pierced with a safety pin.

"Well, we're going to get you nice and familiar."

One of those long white hands is sticking out of the silvery-white fur and Tony grabs onto it only to be pulled against a cool expanse of long naked skin. Loki is almost a head taller than him, and even when he stands on his toes their mouths barely touch. Tony settles for pressing his lips to that long neck and dragging his nails down miles of miles of spine until he's got both of his hands where he wants them.

He holds Loki's ass in both hands and squeezes.

"Mmmmmmm." Hums Loki and suddenly Tony finds himself pressed against the door leading back into the venue, both of his hands pinned above his head and naked skin keeping him flushed against the splintering wood.

"Now behave." Loki whispers in his ear and it has the exact opposite effect, as suddenly Tony doesn't even know what he wants but he wants it _now_.

"Never." Breathes Tony and when Loki chuckles against his throat it reverberates throughout his entire body.

"Oh, I do believe I like you."

Before Tony knows it he's being led into the building and down the stairs.

* * *

Thank you all for your lovely reviews!


	10. Chapter 10

Tony hardly blinks as he's pushed into the back of an achingly neon green Volkswagen .

He forgets to blink when he discovers that it's purple inside, there's no passenger seat, and a petit man with a ten pound mustache in a flaming red suit is behind the wheel.

"To the Bellisade, Harry." When Loki stretches his endless legs with an orgasmic sigh Tony understands why there's no passenger seat.

"But what about the party, Mr. Lauff?" His voice is possibly the most stereotypically English voice that Tony has ever heard. His mustache twitches and Tony starts to wonder if this is all some sort of pre-death hallucination, and he's actually laying in a ditch in the road somewhere spaced out of his mind.

"Perhaps, later. It's only two. The night is young. Have you got my candy, Harry?"

"Under the seat, Mr. Lauff."

"Far out."

Tony watches as Loki pulls a large silk satchel out from beneath his seat. He opens it and sticks two fingers inside.

"Now Tony, close your eyes and open your mouth."

Tony has a feeling his inability to say no to that voice isn't going to end as good for him as it started, but he does as he's told.

"Do you want to play a game?"

Tony nods and the next thing he knows there is a finger and a pill in his mouth. The finger glides against his tongue and leaves the chalky little round pill behind.

"Swallow, baby."

Tony dry swallows and nearly gags and the next thing he knows the cold mouth of a bottle is pressed against his lips and red wine is being poured down his throat.

He's still coughing when Loki kisses him, and he tastes like expensive tobacco and seems to suck the coughs out of his throat.

"My turn." Announces Loki finally and passes the silk bag to Tony, who only stares at it.

"What are these?" He asks and Loki laughs with delight.

"Could be anything!"

Tony watches, almost unable to suppress his horror, as Loki takes three from the bag and puts them in his palm.

"I like their composition." He announces seriously before knocking them back with at least half of the bottle of wine.

Tony hopes his heart is pounding because he's nervous.

"What did you think of the show?" Loki asks and Tony hasn't a clue what to say. He watches the light of passing cars reflect in those two green eyes and looks at the flash of gleaming white leg through the white fur. Loki puts a cigarette between his lips and lights it for him.

Tony inhales and something about the nicotine unhinges his tongue.

"Transcendent." He says and hardly takes the time to wonder where that word came from.

Loki looks shocked enough for them both.

Transcendent?" He murmurs and Tony nods.

"I've never, I haven't, It wasn't, I just, there's nothing like you. Never has been. Never will b—"

And suddenly lithe soft lips are pressed against his own, moving and tasting and teasing and Tony wants to _bite_.

He lets his hands work over the front of Loki's coat, trying to find the fastenings, but the infuriating bastard is being no help whatsoever.

Tony's frustrating quest ends with his unoccupied hand tangling with Loki's own as Loki's tongue slides wetly against his own.

"Oi! This's a company car!" Yells Harry and suddenly Tony registers that something's burning.

He's pressed his cigarette through the leather of the seat, and left a smoldering scar behind.

He feels Loki laugh before he sees it, and it sounds like its coming from far away. Before he can wonder why it sounds like Loki's laughing from the other side of a tunnel he's sprawled across his lap, nearly drowning in fur.

"I'm gonna have to keep a tighter leash on you, puppy, you're dangerous."

"Whyze everyone keep callin me that?" Tony's tongue feels heavy.

"Have you seen yourself lately, darling?"

Tony looks at his own hands and it looks like he's looking at them through foggy glass.

"Half-naked and mincing about all alone? Sassy little twink with eyes like they came fresh out of the oven, flirting with anything on legs?"

Tony wants to disagree but he's misplaced his body and he's pretty sure all of the bones he would have used for disagreement are in there.

"You're a walking advertisement. Begging to be housebroken."

There are hands on his collarbone, rubbing circles of electricity which jolt his entire body out of lassitude and Tony gasps and swears he can feel sparks of life itself dancing in his bloodstream.

Those clever fingers are pulling on his nipples and he swears all of that fur is rubbing his skin against the grain when suddenly—-

"Oh yes, just like that." Says Loki. "Nice and loud for me."

It's like Loki can somehow will sound into existence, because it's only as his moans reverberate off of the car's roof that Tony realizes he'd been making any noise at all.

_Mmmmmm. _

_Oh god. _

**_Please._**

"I wonder what would happen if I did this."

And before Tony can ask that wicked mouth is sucking and pulling and the point of a tooth is digging down onto his hard and swollen nipple.

The more Loki tugs the more it aches and the louder Tony whines.

"So sensitive." Loki stops to remark and Tony doesn't know if he's relieved or upset that he's stopped.

"Has anyone ever—"

"We're here, Mr. Lauff."

Tony vaguely registers the change in scenery as he's pulled out of the car.

"Goodbye mustache?" He says to no one in particular as Loki leads him into the lobby.

* * *

Layla: Exactly! I'm glad somebody else has realized this. It's actually a major part of my fixation. In all of my fandoms I always find the one pairing with the thousand year old dude. hahaha.

Thanks everyone for your kind words! The response to this little story makes me glow like a newly pregnant woman. Literally. Here be the 'more' you hath requested!


	11. Chapter 11

Needless to say, a 6'2 man in heels, a fur coat, full make up, and with hair down to his waist toting around a shoeless shirtless glitter-plastered teenaged boy who's obviously rocked off his tits, gets quite a few looks in a hotel where the lobby has a genuine marble floor.

Halfway to the elevator Loki has to stop Tony from rubbing his sensitized nipples against the embossed wallpaper and moaning. Tony is determined however, and Loki has to bodily rip him off of the wall and throw him into the elevator.

As Tony lays on the elevator floor, all he can see is shocking green leather heels and white feet.

"Beautiful." He murmurs into the floor.

"What was that, puppy?"

"You're beautiful."

This time Loki helps him climb the length of his body and crashes their lips together. They kiss until Tony's shaking and breathing like he's run a mile.

"Do you really think so?"

The elevator door opens and Tony leaps out of Loki's arms in an attempt to walk and flops out onto the carpet. When he looks up he notices that Loki seems to be swaying.

"We're fucked up." Tony says and Loki throws his head back with a bark of a laugh.

"But we look good doing it. Especially you." Loki narrowly escapes having the elevator close on his coat. "You were born to be on your knees."

To stay true to the spirit of things, Tony crawls beside Loki on his hands and knees, all the way to his room.

Whenever Loki slides one of his cool leather shoes against his bare skin Tony feels it like a kiss.

* * *

Layla: I did warn for a slow burn. I'm also known to take my time. I'm all about the UST. You gotta build these things to unknown proportions of hot before you get to the fireworks display. But trust me, I'm gonna fucking make it worth it for you guys.

Anya: A billion itty bitty chapters (between 200-2,500 words or so) are my style o fic. And thanks! :)

creaturecomfort: Thank you so much! I have probably seen Velvet Goldmine about 9000 times. I fucking love that film.

hulksicle: Don't worry. I'm going to take such good care of you, darling. ;)

Sue, , Loki4ever: Thank you kindly!

xXDeidara-chanXx: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. And most people need a complex plot with actual twists for there to be cliff hangers. Not me man.


	12. Chapter 12

Tony doesn't know what he'd been expecting but it hadn't been _this_.

The very fabric of life is swirling beneath his skin, picking at his seams and spinning him into a state of bliss unlike anything he's ever known before as he lays on the white carpet of a what he thinks might be a hotel room. The carpet kisses his skin and sticks wetly in his sweat as he arches against it, every muscle and tendon in his body pulling taut before relaxing against its plushness.

"Gods, darling." Growls Loki and the next thing Tony knows his legs are being kicked apart. He feels the cold bottom of one of those sinfully tall heels pressed lightly against his sternum. The thin point of it falls in the soft spot between the halves of his rib cage. The toe of Loki's other shoe rests in the space between his legs and Tony _rubs_ himself against it.

"I could watch you all night."

"Better not." Breathes Tony before he grinds just a little too hard against the thick sole of that tall shoe and moans so deep and dark that it makes his hands vibrate.

The next thing Tony knows Loki is gone. He feels cold.

"Loki?" He calls and tries to get up only to end up laying on his stomach, scrabbling at the plush carpet like he's trying to stop himself from sliding down a mountain.

He's sliding and sliding when suddenly there's something cold dripping onto his spine. It's blissfully cool against his burning skin and rips him out of the air mid fall.

"Take those off for me."

Tony can feel it dripping down his ribs and following the curve of his hip bone onto the floor and into his jeans.

Jeans!

_Oh. _

Tony finds his hands lost in the carpet and picks them up piece by piece. He follows the lines of his own body to his belt loops, where he hooks his fingers as he sways on his knees, so he can't drop them again.

There is a length of cool naked skin holding him up and hands over his own in his belt loops, long fingers insinuating themselves between fabric and skin.

"Don't tease me, Tony. I can't bare it."

Tony registers some sound that's kind of like a gust of wind or a whip cracking and his belt is on the floor. Loki is unbuttoning his jeans and before they are even halfway down his thighs there's a slick hand wrapped around his half-hard cock. Tony fucks into it with a whine.

"Mmmm, no self-control, baby?"

Loki tightens his hand and Tony throws his head back against Loki's chest as those long fake nails rake trenches down his side.

Tony howls.

"None at all?"

There's suddenly a hand under Tony's jaw, maneuvering it for him so he shakes his head.

Tony feels like a marionette with the force of the universe crackling beneath his skin and bones made of water and the fist of god steadily trying to stroke it all out of him.

Tony feels something hard pressed against his back and presses against it.

"I'm going to break you."

Tony's laying on his back and he doesn't know how he got there but when his eyes focus Loki is kneeling in front of him holding a cock unlike anything Tony has ever seen before in one hand and dripping something from a bottle onto it with the other. Sweat shimmering like diamonds pools in the hollows above Loki's collar bones and drips down his chest. Tony wants to taste.

"I'm going to break you into tiny, tiny pieces."

Loki holds his hands up to the light before scratching his way down Tony's chest and pushing his legs apart.

Tony lets out a gasp and suddenly there's a finger _inside _of him and Tony doesn't know what's happening. He just knows that he feels full and he doesn't know if he likes it.

"And I'm going to put you back together, darling. Just how I fucking want you."

That finger is impossibly long and Tony doesn't know how it's fitting inside and he didn't even know until thirty seconds ago that you could put a finger in there but

"Ohfuckingjesuschrist!"

"Like that?"

Tony decides he is going to have something permanently surgically put right there so that he never has to not feel

"Fuck!"

He doesn't know what Loki's touching but he wants more and before he can answer there's another finger sliding into his body and that spot inside him is being _pinched_ between them and suddenly Tony realizes that he can't feel any of those long fake nails. He just feels fingers and fireworks and fireworks and

"You're so tight, darling."

Those fingers _twist _and Tony's body nearly comes off the floor as he throws his head back and starts to cum.

Bursts of light shoot behind his eyes as those fingers play and pull with that thing inside him. He's screaming but he can't hear it. It almost hurts and he can't even feel his cock but he thinks his balls might actually be across the room somewhere and he never wants it to end.

Tony murmurs Loki's name softly, over and over again as he returns to earth and those fingers slip from his body. He feels a single one circling his hole and he feels himself quaking against it.

"Anyone ever touch you like this before?"

Tony feels the emptiness inside him like a physical ache and through the lassitude clinging to his skin he barely manages to notice Loki's inquiring single risen eyebrow.

"What was the question?" He manages to ask and Loki chuckles against his skin, deep and dark and sensuous.

Tony feels like led weights are pulling his body into the carpet.

"Need a rest, puppy?" Loki asks and before Tony can even begin to answer he's laying unconscious and naked on the floor of the most expensive room at the Bellisade covered in glitter and sweat and drying cum.

* * *

Felicity C Gilvers: WHO IS TALKING ABOUT ME? *falls over* QHO!?

XXDEIDARA-CHANXX: Mwahahahahahahahahahaha

the writing dead: glam rock+ frost iron= me cumming all over everyonrs pants. i am glad you can also experience ths.

psyche102: i just like to torture people, but unlike certain moffats i also like to deliver. jusr whenever i feel like it. haha

yezho: VELVET GOLMINE IS MY LIFE. PLACEBO IS MY OTHER LIFE. BRIAN MALKO IS JUST LIKE ORGASMIC. Oh my god. Post Blue by them is like my favorite sonf on my frostiron playlist on spotify. Thank you for appreciating the burn. work those thighs honey. unf

cunning linguist: HELL TO THE YEAH. it's like you know the inner walls of mymind

creature comfort: ;) bb. yeah.

Layla: i have killed many in my quest for hot ust

Loki4ever: here it is bb. MORE.

sue: mwehahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahaah

wob: THANK YOU SO MUCH SIRANDORMADAM.


	13. Chapter 13

When Tony wakes up he is incredibly confused.

And he hasn't even opened his eyes yet.

Touch alone tells him that he's laying naked on a bed. He knows he didn't fall asleep in one.

Touch alone also tells him that he's sandwiched between two men, and that the one spooning him from the front is poking him in the stomach with a leaking erection. He's wrapped in a sweaty bar-scented cage of limbs and is halfway to panicking when he feels familiar plastic talons tap against his naked hip.

"Rise and shine, Puppy." The whisper against Tony's ear sends shivers sweeping down his spine. It almost hurts. His body feels like its made entirely of led. He barely manages a groan in response.

"Rough night?"

Somehow Loki's snaked a hand against his cheek and is running those impossibly long nails against his barely there stubble. Every stroke scrambles his mind further and Tony is too busy reveling in that touch wonder at the strangeness.

"Get rid of the interloper and I'll take care of you."

Tony doesn't know what an interloper is but Loki's nipping at his ear and his whisper sounds like it promises everything that Tony has ever wanted. Also, considering there's only one other person in the bed it's not too hard for Tony to figure it out.

After minutes of painstakingly extricating his hand from the flesh cage surrounding him he pokes the guy right in the forehead.

The man snorts a little but otherwise doesn't respond.

"You mustn't be afraid to get a bit more physical, darling."

The hand grabbing his ass after giving it a playful slap is thoroughly distracting.

Tony looks up into the chin of the interloper and realizes that, considering the tangle of limbs they're in, he could totally get away with kneeing said interloper in his family jewels.

The scream the interloper lets out as he flies off of the bed is hilarious, so hilarious that it almost distracts Tony from the slight uncomfortable twinge of his hole as he flexes his muscles to knee the poor guy.

And suddenly it hits Tony that anything could have happened to him while he was unconscious, and considering how he woke up, it most likely did.

Tony's throat is so dry that when he lets out a cry he thinks it might crack open and bleed.

"You scared him!" Cries Loki. With a fluid sort of grace he leaps out of bed, bodily throws the interloper out into the hallway, and tosses his clothes out after him. It all almost seems to happen in slow motion.

When Loki insinuates his long limbs around Tony's body he's still shaking.

"Now baby, hush."

Before Tony knows what's happening he's quieting.

"Did the mean man scare you, darling?"

"Look, I'm gonna be straight with you—"

"Ha bloody ha." Says Loki as he sinks his fingers into Tony's fringe and pushes it against the grain till it stands on end, as if every strand is frayed and slowly coming apart in his hands.

It feels _good_.

"First, I want some food and sec—"

There's a long clawed finger pressed against Tony's mouth as Loki reaches for the phone and casually asks for one of everything to be sent to room 1105 before dropping the phone back onto the receiver. He leans over and pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of the nightstand.

"And second I want to know if anything happened to my asshole while I was sleeping."

The second it comes out of his mouth he cringes and knows that if he wasn't so exhausted he'd be hysterical.

The unlit cigarette which had been dangling from between Loki's lips falls onto the mattress. His eyes are wide and Tony notices that they look more grey than green. The man's mouth is a perfect O of shock. He looks frozen.

"Well?" Says Tony several minutes later and Loki appears to spring to life.

"We took turns fisting your hole." Says Loki as he throws his pack of matches onto the floor. He tosses his miles of dark hair and walks toward the bathroom naked, his hips swaying. "Come have a wash with me."

Tony is guessing that's a sarcastic kind of 'no', as he can't even begin to imagine how punching him is relevant to anything. He's sure that Loki knows he meant sexually. He squeezes his internal muscles again just to check, and the strain is so slight that Tony decides to worry about it later.

"Did I fingerfuck you deaf?" Loki looks at him over his shoulder and Tony swears his gaze is burning a hole in his chest. "Time for your bath, puppy. You smell terrible."

Tony bounds after Loki into the bathroom, embodying his epithet in every way as he skids onto a marble floor and sees Loki sitting in an in-ground bath tub that's more like a small pool, basking under a tap.

He doesn't need to be told what to do.

How cold Loki likes his water makes it almost impossible for any of the things Tony had been anticipating to actually happen.

He shivers as Loki scrubs his hair and shaves his face for him. He can hardly even enjoy those hands sliding down his body, slick with soap.

When it's all said and done Tony springs out of the bath tub.

"You're no fun."

Tony watches, shaking, as Loki ducks under the water with ease and emerges dripping and entirely content.

"The food should be here soon. See to it. And put on a robe or something. I've got a closet full of things. Choose something." Loki says with a wave of a hand before submerging himself again.

Tony knows when he's been dismissed. He leaves the marble bathroom for the main room, which he honestly has almost no memory of.

It's damn impressive. Everything is white and green and the wall paper is hideous and strangely embossed but that's to be expected. The room is huge and cluttered with ornate gold furniture.

Tony's almost forgotten what it's like to be rich. Though he'd spent the first eighteen years of his life sitting primly in the lap of luxury, he's been living out of his car on and off for a year. If he'd told himself at the age of fifteen, he'd be fucking people just to have a bed to sleep in at nineteen _Baby_ Tony would have probably nailed _Fuck-up _Tony in the scrotum with a soldering iron.

He takes extra care to squish the plush carpet between his toes as he begins flinging open doors at random. He squishes and flings, at his glorious leisure, until he comes to a walk-in closet.

Tony finds doors to three whole other rooms first. When he opens the closet he's hardly sure what to make of any of it.

There's two fur coats, three dresses, some things that vaguely resemble pants, and a long turquoise corduroy vest with gleaming white buttons that feel heavier than stones.

Tony chooses the last one just because.

When its on and buttoned it looks more like a dress and the top most button falls slightly above his naval.

Tony kind of digs it. In a strange is-it-a-man-is-it-a-woman-who-cares kind of way he feels pretty sexy.

* * *

Thank you all for the lovely reviews! It really motivates and inspires me when people dig my writing and let me know. You are in for a crazy sexy novel length frostirony ride my dears! Hope you've enjoyed lucky 13. :)


	14. Chapter 14

When Tony opens the door for room service and it takes four guys holding two trays each to bring it all in, and he watches them while sprawled in a purple wing back chair in an ill fitting turquoise vest smoking one of Loki's cigarettes, it occurs to Tony that this isn't how one night stands are supposed to go.

As he lays on his stomach elbow deep in syrup and pancakes, surrounded by a sea of silver platters, and he looks up at Loki, whose lounging on the bed in a kimono telling someone to 'Get another ticket for New Orleans', Tony has a feeling that this really isn't how one night stands are supposed to go.

"New Orleans?" Asks Tony.

"Our next gig. Part of the tour." Asks Loki and he holds out his hand for Tony's cigarette. Tony obliges. "Seventeen cities. Sold out in thirteen of them already. My act's hotter than the devil's left testicle, right about now."

Loki breathes smoke into Tony's face and he inhales around his pancake.

"Ever been to New Orleans?"

Tony has.

"No." Says Tony and Loki's grin is joyful and nearly contagious.

"Well, we're going to get you nice and familiar."

Tony knows he recognizes those words but the memory slips through his fingers. When Loki laughs he does too.

"Also, I know I call you 'puppy', but must you be such a literalist? Sit on a chair at least."

Tony responds by smashing his face into his plate and emerging with almost more than he can chew.

"Can you even taste what you're swallowing?" Loki's voice falls somewhere between motherly and obscene that Tony decides to not even take the time to be confused about how aroused it makes him. In his book, any aroused is good aroused.

Tony downs the pancake with a gulp of milk and sighs happily. He looks up at the kimono-clad rock god through his eyelashes.

"Always." He says and the way Loki's eyes darken nearly makes him drop his fork.

"Aren't you just to die for?" Loki says and holds out a hand. Tony knocks over two glasses of orange juice and a mug of coffee on his way to the bed.

Loki unbuttons his vest slowly and begins to drag his long fake nails over Tony's skin. The hand without the nails plays with his hair.

"About last night," He begins as a jagged edge on his pinky catches the rim of Tony's naval. "After you fell asleep I still needed a little something. And I don't jerk it, baby. Ever. That's why the interloper was here. Originally you were on the other side of the bed. How you ended up between us is one of life's great mysteries."

The golden wonders of a life where you never have to masturbate, because there's someone waiting to take care of your every boner, goes beyond any amount of spoiling that Tony has ever experienced.

His mouth is actually watering.

"I wouldn't let anyone touch you. No one touches you but me."

Tony is confused, because the look in Loki's eyes is terrifying but he can feel his cock twitch, like the man had been speaking specifically to it and its answering back.

"Do you understand, Baby? I'm going to savor you. You're mine, and no one touches my stuff."

Tony nods because what else can he do? There's a hand stroking at his quickly stiffening cock. He groans.

"That's right. I sing for them all. But you sing for me."

Tony pants as he starts to leak all over Loki's fist.

"Going to cum all over my vest, baby? It's designer. Expensive. Dry clean only. I'm going to have you deliver it to the cleaners for me. Hand them over my vest drenched in your own dried cum. They'll know as well as you how it got there. Your entire body will turn positively _pink _with—"

And Tony cums with a shout and he swears for a second he loses consciousness.

When he regains it he realizes that he has to get better at recovering, because Loki's standing up in his kimono, perfectly unruffled and at ease with a cigarette dangling between his fingers talking to a small man with a gigantic mustache.

Tony is laying half naked and flaccid on a bed with his own cum cooling on his stomach.

Despite being notoriously shameless, even he has limits. With a cat like screech he tries to wrap himself in sheets and only ends up throwing himself onto the floor.

When he looks up Loki downturned look is fond and the petit man looks less than impressed.

"So, how many colors do you think saxophones come in?" He asks and both Loki and the man, who Tony suddenly remembers is Loki's driver, look incredibly confused.

"What? It's the city of Jazz. Isn't a saxophone in every color some kind of law?"

The driver looks offended on the behalf of saxophones everywhere. Loki looks positively charmed.

"They're saxophones. Not crayons."

"Bull shit, I want a red and gold one."

"Can you play?"

"If I had a red and gold saxophone I'd learn real—"

"Gentlemen, we've got a plane to catch." Says George and Tony wonders if he could make it anymore obvious how much he doesn't like him.

* * *

So, I think I'm going to do this thing where if people make a specific comment that I can answer or ask a specific question I'll answer you in your own little jawn but if like five people just give compliments I'll thank you simultaneously, because I feel like it's kind of redundant to type thank you 9000 times.

Would anyone be terribly offended by this? I think that it's not particularly rude and makes sense, but I don't want you to think that I'm not grateful for your feedback, because it really does inspire me to write more and faster and just enjoy the ride.

LouiseJedicated: Spoiler Alert: Any and all characters in this story are actually me. But I mean, he can be whoever you want him to be. I don't like to decided things for people, man. And thank you so much!

Jojo: Tony is only 19. He didn't even know what gay sex was until he showed up, man. In 1973 gay sex was not something with an internet fandom of millions, which is pretty much the only reason I'm glad I was born in the 90's. All though, if I had to choose between all of the gay sex I could ever ask for and seeing Bowie's Station to Station tour in 76 I might have a serious existential crisis.

BlackStormsShadow: You hipster. (But I love you anyway bc you were my first fan and the bond we have is sacred. And sensual) I actually stole that line from a Mighty Boosh Episode. The Mighty Boosh is my other other favorite thing. And your mom sounds like a boss. ALSO: DID YOU LISTEN TO THAT BOWIE PLAYLIST I MADE FOR YOU? I HAVE ESSENTIALLY PROPOSED MARRIAGE TO YOU VIA SPOTIFY AND IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT YOU WILL HAVE COMMITTED HOMICIDE ON MY FEELS. FEELICIDE. Do you want that on your conscience, woman?

Thank you to everyone else for your kind words! And for reading! Thanks for sticking with me too. All said and done, this thing is probably going to be around 200-250 pages long. I also don't have a beta, so I edit everything myself. Basically I'm gonna need all of the encouragement I can get. :)


	15. Chapter 15

There is something about New Orleans that Tony can't quite put his finger on.

The city is famous for it's parties and seedy underworld and jazz. For fresh sea food and hot weather and French influence and voodoo and a real laid back attitude that you can't find anywhere else.

In New Orleans you can roll into a café hung over at the age of fifteen, sit next to a cop, and have a beer with him. At ten in the morning. Tony knows this from experience.

Tony literally can't put his finger on it because he's been to New Orleans twice. The first time was when he was one or two years old, so for all he knows it might as well have happened to someone else. The second time was when he was fifteen, and he got so drunk he ended up waking up with an African transvestite named Chrysanta in the back of a broken down hippie van with hanging beads instead of a windshield somewhere off Bourbon Street. To this day, he couldn't tell you how he got there.

He then walked shoeless, in the rain, until he found a little café, where he ended up having a few beers, at ten in the morning, with a nearly retired cop named…ahhh

Tony can't really remember.

He has a feeling he's not really going to remember tonight either.

Before the show he and Loki had taken some more of his candy, and Tony's skin feels like it's going to crawl off of his body if he doesn't keep moving.

Loki is on stage, bellowing and dressed in something that looks like a gymnast would wear it if it didn't have lime green pinstripes and giant studded shoulders. He's got his tongue wrapped around the microphone and sounds like he's gagging out notes and the crowd is going positively insane.

Tony is going insane with them.

"I'm a space invader! I'll be a rockinn-rollin bitch for you!" Loki and the crowd bellow together and it seems that while Loki wanted reverence and silence in LA in New Orleans he wants a full out cataclysm.

"NOW SCRRREEEEAAAMMM FOR ME!" Howls Loki mid song and there is violence in his eyes. Tony can feel it in the crowd. Loki struts like a manic street preacher in a lime green pinstripe waist cinching corset and knife-like stillettos as the crowd bays for him like a pack of hungry dogs.

While Loki flowed like water in LA here he jerks and twists and breaks things with a seductive intensity that leaves Tony breathless and almost horrified.

Loki barks into the microphone and suddenly a guitar solo begins out of absolutely nowhere. Loki appears to wrap himself within it as he strikes a number of strange poses, contorting his impossibly long body into improbable shapes.

Then the sound peters out into nothing and Loki falls on his knees, physically shaking.

"Chime child, chime child I can be your time, child. I'll wreathe you in smoke, when the bell tolls wild." Loki whispers into the microphone. His eyes are closed and the black points which extend into the hollows of his bones and usually make his eyes burn green just make his glistening skin look white. From everywhere bells are tolling, and Tony feels like his spirit has travelled to Notre Dame on the sound and left his hollow body in New Orleans.

"Chime child, chime child I can be your time, child. I'll wreathe you in smoke when I hear Gabriel's Hounds…"

Loki trails off and Tony knows that a storm is coming. The drummer, who Tony has learned is called Peters and sprinkles coke in everything he drinks, begins to pound away at his kit like he's trying to beat the absolute shit out of it.

"HOOOOOOOWWWL!" And the next thing Tony knows his spirit is back in his lungs and people are thrashing madly and he's thrashing too.

The next, next thing Tony knows the crowd is clamoring for an encore. He knows it won't come. He's extricating himself from the fray, going where Loki had told him to go. He follows a series of blurry hallways, to a door with a line of people, mostly women, standing outside of it. He passes all of them.

They aren't happy with him. He slams the door on their protests.

Back stage is chaos. Everyone's moving something, getting something, taking something off, putting something on, or smoking something. Jonce, the keyboardist, is in the corner with a half naked girl.

He's a short, slight man in a sequined vest and he takes the time to shout:

"Oi, Tony! Loki's out back having a fag." Before returning to the girl's breasts.

Tony doesn't know how to take this. He's too fucked up to remember that Brits call cigs fags. He stumbles forward anyway, mostly numb and somewhat horrified.

He's confused when he finds Loki standing by himself out back of the venue, the name of which Tony isn't all that clear on, smoking a cigarette. He's still got about half of his make up on, but he's dressed in the kimono Tony thinks he remembers from LA.

It's unusual in that it's almost entirely silver and green and instead of flowers its covered in beautiful delicate spiders.

"I've been waiting for you." Loki's talking fast.

"Yeeeaah?" Tony feels like his bones have been replaced with frozen slowly melting marmalade.

"I'm taking you out tonight." The words hit Tony's placid marmaladey body like pebbles in a lake.

Tony's answering groan could possibly be a phrase.

"Gonna tart you up and paint the town red with you. Yes." The yes is hissed.

Tony sways on his feet.

"Not like this, though. You're a bit low. Here, I've got just the thing.

The next thing Tony knows there's a pale white thigh sticking out of green silk and white powder being pushed around with a finger on top of it into a neat little line. And his nose is buried in it.

"Breathe in, darling." Says Loki and Tony does. He feels like the inside of his nostrils and throat are being cut with ground glass. He coughs and spits onto the thigh he's bent over.

"What was that?" Asks Tony when he can finally stand up again. He almost expects to see his own blood splattered on Loki's thigh.

Loki laughs low and rich and deep and Tony shivers.

"You know, usually when they're as beautiful as you they don't have a personality. Such jokes!"

Tony's being led by the hand somewhere.

And he's fine with that.

* * *

Pinyaaple: YES. ALL OF THE STUFF FROM HERE ON OUT TILL FORVER WILL BE TOTALLY NEW.

cunning linguist: lol. yeah. I quote shit all the time. I'm like a human quote box. By the end there's some shakespeare, goethe and renaissance artists just in there because yolo! Also, I'm glad you caught that. I don't want people to forget that Tony's playing a game too.

LJ: Hyde is boss. I'm kind of him. I got curly hair and I wear Led Zeppelin T-shirts. I have a Led Zeppelin Tattoo and I'm kind of a sarcastic prick. And hallo nyan lady!

yezho: Good luck with school! Space Monkey is a banging song. I listen to Nancy Boy when I write this sometimes. :) Also Post Blue. I've got this spotifiy frostiron playlist brimming with placebo.

Stormy: My ass is fat and sassy, thank you very much. Do you sew as well? I've always wanted to, but I don't have the patience. You're kind of breaking my heart lady. :( But, I'll find a way to go on. Somehow.

Nancy: What you have to do is have no friends, and hide in your house for five years writing and only emerging only when you run out of weed. Then you will know true writing genius.

Loki4ever: My proposal has actually been rejected, just saying. If you would like to sew some oats I have both quaker and whole grain.

Thank you all for your kind reviews!


	16. Chapter 16

Tony can't stop talking.

If you're first though is 'And that's different from the usual, how?" Then your thoughts need to be apprised of the true gravity of the situation.

He's wearing more make up and jewelry than an aging trophy wife and sitting shirtless in a hotel room with twenty people standing around in awe as he carries out conversations with every single one of them. On completely different topics. At the same time.

He's discussing the possibility of alien life with a man in a powdered wig and a polyester suit. He's talking about the differences between eastern and western romance languages with two women in complete drag. He's talking cars with a man whose heating up heroin in a spoon. He's talking about the Rolling Stones with a woman who claims that Mick Jagger fucked her with a Hershey bar. He's arguing the opposite position of whatever his other position is on alien life with powdered wig polyester dude with a man whose dressed entirely in white.

Occasionally he stops all the conversations to ask the man dressed in white if he's god.

Sometimes the man says yes and sometimes he says no.

Tony doesn't really care what the answer is since he refuses to believe anything that comes out of the man's mouth. Tony can tell by his face that he's a liar. Liars just have a certain kind of face.

Then suddenly Loki is wrapped around him.

"Hello Darl—" Tony begins and before he can finish he's being dragged up into a kiss by one of his long strands of pearls. It tastes like the chalk of pill residue, tobacco, and red wine.

Tony groans into it.

"Aren't you something, puppy?" Says Loki and if Tony knew any better or was closer to sober he might have recognized the danger in that voice. Loki was not pleased.

Tony grins up at him with all of the overconfident ease in the world and Loki's mouth twitches.

"Know a little bit of everything and everyone now, hmmm? Is that why you wandered off?"

Tony looks and sees that Loki has a drink in each hand and suddenly remembers that Loki had told him to stay put while he got them drinks, possibly hours ago. Since then Tony has been buffeted from room to room and in and out of the elevator by various groups of people, chattering all the while.

"Fuck." Says Tony and Loki nods darkly.

"Indeed."

"Look, baby, I'm sorry but I'm not sure what the hell I'm even on or how I'm feeling or where we are and I don't know how this happened but I do know that…"

As Loki grabs him by the wrist and drags him out of the hotel room, down a hall, down three flights of stairs, and into the car Tony's still talking. Sometimes he's apologizing, sometimes he's making observations, and sometimes his thoughts pour out of him in disjointed burbles of sound.

Loki puts something between his lips and he swallows it and that's that.

* * *

LouJ: Fashion design? Sweet. Furry coats are pimpin. As the philosopher Z said, Get that dirt off your shoulder.

Stormy: We shall have to try!

Layla: Sorry man, glad you're still digging it though.

xD: More happens in this than just porn ummm...I hope I don't get chased out of here with pitchforks and torches but, overall, this is more about the interplay of their mutual damage and needs and wants and psychological complexes and shit and there's lots of just building and atmosphere-ing, and stuff. And this mystery sort of happens. It's trippy. But there's definitely porn too. The porn's just kind of the collateral damage of their feels and intense sexuality.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing!


	17. Chapter 17

When Tony wakes up he's on a plane and he feels like he's died.

He's curled up in Loki's lap like a child and a hand is playing with his hair. The dirty looks of the other passengers in first class are like physical daggers through whatever the hell he's wearing. It feels silky. He feels the silk over his skin for a long minute. He drags his fingers over it.

It's so soft.

Tony can dig that.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a man in a grey suit look nearly purple with rage in their vague direction, and just to spite him he slowly lifts his weary head and softly kisses the sharp underside of Loki's jaw.

Before he can appreciate the firework display of disgust turning the man's face violent colors there's a curtain pulled around them.

"Don't move. I've got my ash tray on your hip."

It's as if Loki's words can literally will physical objects into existence, because Tony can suddenly feel the tray's little clawed feet resting on his skin as it balances precariously on his hip bone.

"How are you feeling?" Asks Loki and his voice sounds tight and unsure.

"Food." Says Tony. "Lots of food."

He feels Loki's chuckle more than hears it and suddenly a tiny bell is ringing. The curtain is pushed aside and a flight attendant appears.

"Yes, Mr. Lauff?" She says and her eyes are wide with idolatrous glee. Tony wonders if she volunteered to do this, because he's pretty damn sure that that's not how flight attendants work.

"Tell her what you want, baby." Says Loki and Tony thinks that if he had the energy to move he'd totally be flirting with her, because she has perfect tits.

"Food." The prospect of food seems infinitely more appealing than anything in the universe. His mouth starts to water. "A cheeseburger." He wonders if his body is confused or just that out of whack because even he has never almost gotten hard thinking about a cheeseburger.

"Did you keep it warm like I asked?" Loki asks the flight attendant and she nods emphatically.

"Yes Mr. Lauff! Of course!"

"Fantastic. And bring us some Merlot."

"Yes Mr. Lauff. Right away Mr. Lauff."

The curtain is put back and Loki sighs.

"Here, have a drag. It will fix you right up."

Tony takes a drag of the cigarette between his lips and swears he can feel the glorious calm flowing through his entire body.

When the flight attendant comes back with two cheeseburgers, a mountain of fries, two wine glasses, and a tall bottle of Merlot on a tray Tony realizes that this really isn't how one night stands are supposed to work.

"Problem?" Asks Loki as he fills both glasses to the brim and knocks half of one back.

Tony looks between the rock god, the glasses of red, and the cheeseburgers.

"These are like all of my favorite things."

"How dreadful this must be for you."

Loki decides to sip the rest of his wine and savor it properly. It makes his lips deliciously red.

"No, I just mean, how did you know?"

Loki shoots him a quite unimpressed look. "Either I am a being of awesome and terrible power masquerading as some sort of rock and roll whore, or you told me."

"I'd believe either."

"Flatterer." Says Loki and Tony feels like he's heading off of a cliff toward a nervous breakdown. Biting into that cheeseburger feels like a cheesy meaty retroactive bungy jumping cord.

"And you're not a whore."

Loki smiles warmly.

"You're a prostitute. People lob off their arms to spend a night with you."

Loki looks like he wants to be offended, but he can't quite manage it. Tony dips a French fry in his wine. An another. Halfway through his third fry it occurs to him that Loki should probably be killing him right now, but if Loki's not feeling it than Tony isn't going to give him any cause to. He can feel the tension in Loki's body, feel it like it's ready to snap, but whatever Loki's playing at, Tony's happy to play along.

"There is so much wrong with you."

"What? It's kind of like a malted." Insists Tony and Loki shakes his head fondly.

* * *

LouJ: Thanks. I actually have plans for her. It's just not going to happen for awhile. The way I'm writing this, it's supposed to be over the course of a handful of weeks, but feel like a much longer time has passed. I'm kind of trying to stretch and shrink how time feels accordingly.

Stormy: Ummmm, plot twist? Punishment is coming though. When Loki snaps he fucking snaps. I feel like a lot of people try and forget that he's fucking crazy so they can put cat ears on him and try to cuddle him. Not this bitch.

Sue: I like that you didn't even say 'someone is in trouble' but, 'someone is trouble'. So accurate. hahaha

Cheesy: Thanks so much! Loki is actually a glam rock god (dess), a la ziggy stardust, the immortal early 70's martian rock messiah created and played by David Bowie, who I am actually in love with, and when I try to explain what his music means to me to people I start to cry. And not even just when I'm stoned. Like all the time.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing!


	18. Chapter 18

They are in Orlando. Tony had no idea they were in Orlando until the pilot announced it. He doesn't really care. While there's something about New Orleans that Tony can't put his finger on, and he is somewhat in love with the mystery of it, he doesn't even want to touch Orlando. It's like a less cool New York City with more children, tourists, and mouse ears.

And humidity.

Not thrilling, and not really even that nice.

It turns out to be the weirdest place in the universe. And not because of anything that has do with Orlando specifically.

All though, the fact that the state of Florida can't really afford a police force doesn't hurt.

Tony and Loki are already drunk and giggling when they get off the plane and one of Loki's handlers piles them into a cab toward their hotel.

Absolutely everything is hilarious.

The cab driver looks murderous by the time they are outside the Giancarlo, which has golden pillars and golden doors.

"Welcome to El Dorado." Says Loki as he opens one of the front doors and ushers Tony inside. "No accounting for taste."

Tony disagrees. Shiny is always good. And **damn**, was the Giancarlo shiny. And gold.

Just throw in some red and it would have been fucking perfect.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Tony registers that people are looking disgusted and offended at the sight of them. He registers a woman covering up her children's eyes and an old man with a pipe full of tobacco muttering 'faggots' under his breath.

The forefront of his mind is occupied by Loki's long-fingered hand grabbing his ass through his silk what-ever-the-hell he's wearing.

"Baby, stop it." He says without meaning it and it occurs to him that he sounds like those girls he used to talk into sleeping with him. He remembers how much it drove him crazy when they played coy and figures its time for a little sweet revenge.

He nearly misses the concierge's horrified expression as he drops a room key into Loki's outstretched palm from nearly three feet away, taking great care not to touch him.

"Thank you, dear." Says Loki with a wink that causes the concierge to physically turn green before dragging Tony away.

In the (gold) elevator Tony finds himself pressed up against a wall.

Loki's teeth are at his throat and his hands are sliding up his shirt and Tony throws his head back and sighs.

"Looooki." He breathes out on a tiny whine as those fingers circle his nipples through his shirt.

"Yes, darling?"

"Shouldn't we...mmm...wait until we get to the room?"

The next thing Tony knows one of those hands is around his rapidly hardening cock and teeth are nipping at his ear.

"You don't feel like you want to wait. In fact, you feel ready right now."

"But Loki-"

"You're already so wet. I could bend you over right now and have you if I wanted, couldn't I?"

Operation Torment Loki isn't quite going how Tony expected. A voice is his head is screaming 'Abort!' but turns to white noise as fingers pinch and pull at his nipples through silk.

"Couldn't I, baby?"

Suddenly Loki isn't touching him anymore and Tony feels like all of the air in the elevator is gone.

"Yes!" He gasps and a bell rings. The elevator stops.

The walk to their room is torture.

Even the limber and dextrous Loki can only walk so fast in heels.

* * *

Yezho: He's kind of like some weird combination of Ziggy Stardust and a dominatrix. Idek. I just do what I want man. AND YES. A DAVID BOWIE FAN. LET ME LOVE YOU. DAVID BOWIE IS MY LIFE.

Cheesy: It's just Ziggy Stardust. Look up the song 'Moonage Daydream' specifically. That song is delicious. It also explains everything.

JoJo: THERE WILL BE NO MENTIONS OF GLEE ON THIS FIC. NOPE. NOT TODAY. THE STARS ARE NOT IN ALIGNMENT. CAN'T DO IT.

xD: I can't even predict this honestly. I'm like 9/10 done the first draft of this (the whole fic is about 200 pages long) and I don't even know how it's gonna end man. I just go with it. Most of the fun of writing for me comes from having a story I've never seen before and not knowing how it will go and conclude.

hulky: I am a fan of acid, all though I had the most horrifying trip once. It was like Steven Moffat and Stephen King fucked and had a grotesque plot baby on my life. I went to another place man. It was some fucked up shit. There may actually be one of those chapters coming up. Depends on if it fits, but if I can do that for you I totally will.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing!


	19. Chapter 19

Even the room is gold and Tony feels like he's in some kind of strange fantasy land as Loki picks him up and pins him against the wall, forcing him to wrap his legs around his hips.

He feels Loki's cock strain against his own and groans.

He hums low and deep in his chest and Tony swears he can feel it run along the length of every last one of his nerves.

Tony experimentally shifts to get more friction against his cock. It feels so good that he does it again. And again.

"Do you like humping my leg, puppy?"

Suddenly there are hands squeezing his ass and Tony doesn't know what to do with himself.

"I'm gonna get you nice and ready to take all of this."

Tony finds one of his hands wrapped around Loki's cock and jesus christ, it's huge.

"Now, don't you look up at me with your sad eyes, by the time I'm through with you you'll be begging for it. You're. So. Sensitive."

Tony didn't think he was. He'd been good with girls. About half the time he could last as long as he wanted, and by his reckoning that's pretty fucking impressive for a kid whose not even twenty.

"Though so pretty when you're frightened."

And suddenly their naked, stretched out on a bed. Loki's stroking and Tony's gasping and he hasn't any idea how they got there. They're naked and Tony feels like he's burning.

There is a single, warm wet finger circling his hole.

Tony feels himself tremble and his hole twitch toward that digit as every last inch of him demands to be filled.

The knowledge that even his body is aching for it steals his breath. He abstractly wonders if he's going to cry before that sliver of blissful relief is plunging inside him.

"Oh." He cried and Loki smirks.

"You really have never done this before have you?"

Tony begins to shake his head but it ends up flung against the pillow as another finger slides home. They stretch and pull and burn and occasionally graze something deep inside him. When they do Tony chokes on air.

"What is that!?" He asks after a particularly violent stab just there leaves him gasping and leaking.

Loki chuckles and Tony can feel the fingers stretching him wider than he's ever been before. The wine has made his muscles placid and loose and Tony isn't sure, but there might actually be a third finger opening him up.

Three of Loki Lauff's fingers inside him.

Fuck.

The noise Tony makes isn't even human.

"Did I find your spot, baby?"

"My sp-?" Tony begins, but is cut off by Loki taking whatever it is between two fingers and pinching.

"Oh yes, I rather think I have."

Tony howls.

"And this is just a few measly fingers. Imagine what it will feel like when I've got you bouncing on this."

Tony looks down and he thinks that Loki's cock might actually be looking into his soul because sweet buttery christ, a man could club a small animal to death with that thing.

It's thick and long and flushing pink. It stands out from between his hips from a neat bunch of sable curls.

"I've almost got four fingers in you, nearly my whole hand. Could you imagine that, puppy? My hand inside you? Down to the wrist? Filling you until you sobbed?"

"Oh god."

"Mhmm." Says Loki with another little twist and Tony doesn't know or care if he can really handle the monster between Loki's legs, but he knows that he wants it inside him. He has to do it.

Tony wants.

And Tony Stark gets what he wants.

"Looookiii." He whines. "Come on, I'm ready."

"Are you really?"

Tony nods and bites his lip until it turns red.

"Come on." His breath hitches as those lithe fingers twist.

"I want it."

Loki says nothing.

"I want your cock."

The growl that rips its way out of Loki's throat satisfies something deep within Tony. He goes on as Loki mercilessly finger fucks him. He can't help himself.

"Loki, I...I...I..need..."

"Ask nicely."

"Oh for fucks-"

And the next thing Tony knows the head is slowly sliding inside him and he swears he can feel his eyes roll around in his skull.

"Bit out of your depth, baby?"

Tony doesn't know whether it hurts or it feels good but its strange to be so full.

"I applaud you for trying to play, but you don't even know the rules."

Tony isn't sure if he can hear. He wonders if its logistically impossible for a cock to be endless.

"Only I know the rules."

Tony thinks he might be crying. Either that or its sweat. His body is dripping as it shakes, beyond his control. His hole involuntarily clenches around the length inside him and Loki howls.

Tony does it again with a shit eating grin.

"You might want to be a little nicer to me, baby." He slurs and squeezes just this side of too hard. Loki bites into his bottom lip. Blood begins to run down his chin.

The next thing Tony knows he's being kissed within an inch of his life. He feels like he's being devoured whole. There's blood and saliva dripping from his lips and it all tastes like cigarettes and wine.

As that clever tongue sends sparks shooting down his spine Loki finally bottoms out. Tony breaks the kiss only because he can hardly even remember how to breathe.

He chants out a series of sounds with no definition and precise meaning as Loki angles himself and whatever that thing inside him is lights up like a christmas tree on fire.

"Fucking christ."

Loki's hardly moving, barely even sliding in and out. He just shifts slightly on the bed, edging his cock and driving Tony steadily out of his mind.

"Tell me!" Tony croaks and Loki is almost too busy panting like a motherfucker to answer.

"Tell you what?" He tries for nonchalant but it falls unbelievably flat. He's got teeth tearing into his bloody lip and his rhythm is starting to falter. It's only a matter of time before he cums.

"What do you keep touch-"

It seems to Tony that one of Loki's greatest pleasures in life is interrupting him mid-sentence, because all of his attempts to keep asking how he keeps making him feel like this are quickly interrupted with jerking stabs of Loki's thick cock.

"You mean your spot, puppy?"

Tony groans.

"Prostate. Little bundle of nerves. Proof positive of an ultimately benevolent univ-"

Tony slowly lets his hole tighten until Loki's choking on his words. His hard and aching cock suddenly hits him like an afterthought, and he's suddenly too overpowered by the need to cum to be smug.

When Loki regains focus he's suddenly sliding out and Tony begins to sob.

"Hush, Darling. I'm going to take such good..."

Tony feels like he's being impaled as that cock slides in him faster than he'd ever thought possible and there's raw panic burning in his chest and eyes until Loki begins drilling his prostate.

Tony screams. And screams.

And screams.

"Fuck you're tight. Fuck. Fuck Fuck."

And suddenly Tony's entire universe consists of that fat cock fucking him open.

"I.." He begins and never finishes, because he can feel how heavy his balls are as that energy coils in his abdomen, begging to spring free.

When he cums his whole body shakes and spasms and he feels Loki's cock pulsing as his insides are flooded with hot seed.

"Mine!" Growls Loki as he pumps his way through, and Tony vaguely registers some sort of discomfort as he clamors for air and the fake nails on Loki's hand draw blood from his hip. His whole lower body feels numb.

Loki's cock gives one last half-hearted twitch as it starts to soften.

Tony feels like he's run an marathon and groans unhappily when Loki starts to pull out.

"Sorry baby, but its gotta be done." Loki sounds hoarse and Tony sighs unhappily as he's left feeling hollow, like a cold wind could cut clear through him. He groans as his hole attempts to close on nothing at all.

"Can I just...?" Loki begins and before Tony can even realize that he didn't finish his question he's got one finger all the way inside.

It feels like nothing at all.

"You're so wet and open."

When Loki pulls out his finger, and drips the cum on it into his mouth like its a pipette, Tony doesn't know whether he's disgusted or aroused.

"What if I could keep you like this always? Gaping and full of me?"

Tony wishes his cock would shut the fuck up about it and let him sleep, because he isn't even sure he remembers how to speak.

When Loki yawns he feels immensely gratified.

"Nap time." Tony mumbles and vaguely pats somewhere on the bed by flinging his hand at it.

As Tony drifts into unconsciousness Loki is inhaling the sweet smoke of a cigarette. It dangles from between his lips. He's got Tony's hand in one of his and is cradling a burnt match in the other.

His exhale curls across the bed like wisps of fingers.

* * *

xD: Still blushing, darling?

Codebreaker: Do I get both a glorious feast and a sacrifice?

Layla: ehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

12raven21: I am actually a tease 9000% of the time. It's kind of a problem.

Thank you all for reading and reviewing. I hope you have enjoyed this whopping near 2000 words of porn. Do you know how often I write a 2000 word chapter? NEVER. Holy titballs.

Also, I've just finished the first draft of the entire age of frost. It is 60,000 motherfucking words long. Holy titballs, also.

Shit gets so cray you guys. It's so cray, that it ain't even a cray-off. This shit cray_on. _

_... _

Where did all of these tomatoes come from?


	20. Chapter 20

Tony wakes up alone in the hotel room. It's dark and somewhat creepy and he thinks that every muscle in his body might be sore.

The room still smells like sex and Tony feels the beginnings of interest start to pool the hollows of his bones. All he wants is to go back to sleep.

"Shut up," He looks down at his soft cock. "You have no right to be hard ever again."

It seems to agree. The next thing Tony realizes is that he's got dried cum all over his thighs and crack. It's unpleasant.

Trying to get out of bed is even more unpleasant.

"Loki?" He calls out and silence is his answer. If anyone asked, Tony wouldn't say that he was disappointed exactly.

He'd just say that he's, well...

He feels like someone tried to cram a baseball bat up his intestines.

"If he comes near me with that thing again I'm chopping it off." He says to no one as he painstakingly limps towards what he hopes is a bathroom. To his utter delight, it is, and it has a large, deep clawed bathtub. There is also a green marble bar in the bathroom, against the opposite wall.

Tony thanks god for small miracles as he limps over to the bar, steals a bottle of bourbon, and almost manages to climb into the tub without crying.

"Where does he even get off with a dick like that? It shouldn't even be possible."

The water is warm and it feels like heaven. The bourbon is delicious.

Tony stays in there till he's pruned, draining and adding more water every so often to keep it nice and hot. He decides to stay there until walking is no longer a problem.

When, at some point later, he hears Loki enter the room with two giggling girls he decides he'll stay in the bathroom until the very end of the universe.

Tony puts his head under the water, only coming up for air and bourbon.

He almost can't hear them at all.

* * *

Kaira: I WILL HAVE ALL OF THE PICKLES I WANT.

Felicity: I actually won the Punic wars. The only reason it's not in the history books is because of the white man's lies.

CunLing: Haha. nyt bestseller. That would be ballin. And I knew what you were referring to, I just thought that using Nemo the fish instead of Captain Nemo would be fun. And you didn't specify. I'm kind of like a prompt genie in a smartass lamp.

tam: If you want to prompt me with specific things, feel free to do that on my tumblr. I'm the mittcro-romnicon. There's a link on my profile. I'm actually always filling prompts. I'm not really going to do any fills in the AoF universe though. :)

Stormy: That's because my father raised me to be a gentleman, since I'm pretty sure he figured out I was basically gay years before I thought about it. Even when I'm stoned, I do not lose my class and grace. My mind just becomes like this moose on top of a christmas tree penis-fencing with Boris Karloff rattling around inside a giant monocled head. And I would be delighted to pet you. All though, if I whispered all of the dirty things to you that I could, it might take _days_. I've got quite the imagination.

Codebreaker: WOO! ALL NIGHT FEAST N SACRIFICE. And I'm not picky. As long as it's dead and has suffered a little bit I'm down.

Nogs: THANK YOU SO MUCH! That is the best compliment you can really give a writer. I am glad that I can grab your interest despite you liking only one of the three things involved.

Nyan: *and innuendo by queen begins to play*

THIS STORY HAS SURPASSED 100 REVIEWS. I FEEL SO LOVED AND APPRECIATED. I LOVE YOU ALL. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

PS) From here on out shit gets real. Holy shit. We are about to run the full gamut of emotion people. Please make sure all of your personal items are secured.


	21. Chapter 21

When Tony wakes up he seriously starts to reconsider his life choices. The amount of time he spends waking up in places and not knowing how he got there is starting to get kind of ridiculous.

Then he realizes that he's laying on his side and the point of one of his hipbones is digging into the bathroom floor, and that he has some combination of hangover and internal bleeding. And his lungs are on fire.

"SPIT IT THE FUCK OUT."

He hears Loki bellow and the next thing he knows he's vomiting up something vaguely bourbon colored and it burns like hell. It makes him cough, which makes him vomit again.

He looks up and sees a naked thickset blonde in her 30's with tits so large they hang down to her belly button holding onto the doorframe, looking dazedly at him, like she can't even see him. It looks like she's been attacked by an animal.

She's covered in bites and scratches and lipstick.

Tony throws up again and feels Loki's hand on his back.

"That's it baby, that's it." The amount of times he's heard that in other contexts, but never in a voice so soft, leave Tony feeling dizzy.

"You and you're loose friend, get the fuck out."

Tony watches the girl float away and screws his eyes shut. He feels Loki stretched out on the floor behind him, spooning him, with a thin hand rubbing his stomach.

Tony hears the door of Loki's room open and close.

"Did I fuck you stupid?"

Tony wonders how Loki can say something like that without it sounding like the insult it obviously is.

"It's a valid question. You got so drunk that you blacked out. In a bathtub."

"I was snorting coke off your thigh in an alleyway two nights ain't much of a stretch."

"Baby, that was over a week ago."

That's a thought Tony doesn't need to have. It's like a whole other hangover on its own.

"Fuck it." Says Tony. He tries to extricate himself from Loki's grasp but can't. "Did you fuck them?" He asks and the anger is enough to shock Loki's arms slack. Tony slides across the bathroom floor and glowers at him.

"Had them sent back to your room right from the concert? Did you do it!?"

"Yeah," Says Loki, simple as anything. "It's what they were made for."

Tony is angry and he doesn't know why. Or he just might know, and the little tidbit of knowledge makes his anger _burn_.

"So what, the universe is made of walking sacks of meat you can fuck?"

"Essentially."

Tony grits his teeth.

"What, are you on the rag or something?"

Tony feels like Loki is laughing at him and suddenly he wants to knock all of his teeth out.

"I've got some Quaaludes in a pez dispenser in the bar. Pop em until they've medicined the cunt out of you. I'm going for a drive."

Tony watches as Loki gets up.

"So what, I almost drink myself straight to hell and you immediately want to shove pills down my throat? Good call, Doctor Lauff!"

Tony's hardly even finished his obligatory and delicious slow sarcastic clap when Loki's got him against the wall by his throat.

"If you want to kill me do it yourself, motherfucker." Growls Tony and Loki bares his teeth.

"I'd love to kill you. I'd enjoy it more than any other paltry entertainment your body could ever provide! You ignorant boy!"

"Then fucking do it, Shakespeare! Put the iambs away and your balls out! Smash my head against the fucking wall!"

Their lips are a hairsbreadth away and their breaths are in sync. Loki's eyes are burning and Tony begins to gag as those impossibly strong fingers start to tighten.

"You don't look afraid yet. I mustn't be squeezing hard enough."

Tony feels his body start to jerk and flail as if the skin will split and form a new seam through which can breathe. Blackness is curling like ink in water around the corners of his vision and before he realizes that he's managed to nail Loki in the crotch both of them are curled up on the floor in separate little balls of personal agony, panting and groaning.

Tony tries to sit up and the pain in his ass immediately sends him curling back up on the floor.

"Shit." He croaks, and the knowledge that the same man who fucked him stupid just tried to strangle him to death is more than he can take.

Tony doesn't know what city he's in, or if he's high or not, when he ate last, or who the hell he just lost his virginity to. He doesn't know what's happened or what day it is or what's going to happen next. He doesn't know when he'll be able to walk without feeling like he's in agony or if he's gonna wake up under a pile of hungover, fucked up, people whose gender he can't even tell.

Tony starts to cry.

Through his tears, he sees Loki slowly remove each of his heels, and crawl naked toward the bar, where he blindly grabs for a pez dispenser.

It's a batman Pez dispenser.

Tony knows that Loki is going to fuck himself up and he doesn't want to watch, but as Loki's throat works around the whittled down tablets, sucking them down, he finds himself hypnotized.

"Fuck you." Tony says and Loki flips him the bird while taking a swig of something from a bottle with fake diamonds sticking out of it.

"I don't think you've earned it, darling."

Suddenly Tony's laughing but he's crying because laughing makes his throat burn.

"That's the spirit."

When Loki stands over him dangling down a hand like a rope Tony takes it and swings.

He doesn't particularly want to.

He doesn't particularly not want to.

It's just that when he tries to think of other options he draws a complete blank.

* * *

Kaira: I am either too stones or not stoned enough to understand.

Felicity: Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I only became a writer because in most other situations psychologically torturing people isn't smiled upon. Then I go 'FUCK YEAH' and continue to try and seduce myself and comb my pompadour. Then my roommate walks in and ruins the moment with her disapproving eyebrows.

Stormy: I would just like to clarify one thing: I am a sex god all the time. You also need to stop teasing me, because I am Gomaz Addams and you keep speaking French and I am going to explode, mon petite cabbage.

hulky: bby, im so sorry. bad trips are like the worst. :( and i suffered the same problem. when i finished writing this i was depressed for like three days. I didn't even know what to do.

LW: YYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAA AYYYYYYUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH 

Ca-caw: Why are we not best friends?

creature: yo body is not ready. you so right.

Layla: Everytime I see your name I have to listen to the song by eric clapton. I love you.

Nyan: IMMA KILL ALL OF YOU.

PS) I sing on experimental dance tracks now. I sing in the style of Serious Moonlight David Bowie. PRAISE ME. Thank you for reading and reviewing. I love you guys. you make me feel loved. in a sexual way. touch mah burreh.


	22. Chapter 22

Tony wakes up on his side, with Loki wrapped around him.

His first thought is that someone made entirely of bones should not be so comfortable. Or smell so good.

His second thought is that cuddling in the morning (Is it? Could be afternoon?) light with the man who tried to dope you up and strangle you the night before is probably not the smartest choice a person can reasonably make.

The fact that this was not his first thought makes him want to bash his head against something.

There's an arm flopped over him and Tony nudges his nose to the soft cool skin and inhales.

"Do you really want to die?"

Tony hums a vaguely questioning noise in the voice's general direction, but Loki does not repeat his question. Tony nips at his forearm and tastes.

"You constantly surprise me."

Tony's tongue freezes mid lick and his lips stop moving but do not leave the tender skin.

"I'm going to write a song about you."

Tony does not want to feel flattered, but a part of his brain is suddenly squealing at the other parts of his brain like a teenaged girl. On speed.

And he's seen enough of that to know what he's talking about.

"George," Says Loki and Tony can hear him on the other end. He really wants to know how Loki managed to get and dial the phone while still spooning with him. "I want Wendy...what do you mean she's in half...last night...I did what?"

Tony kind of wants to laugh. So he does.

"...But I can't write without her! Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost will be dead without Wendy-"

"Wendy's your guitar, right?" Asks Tony and Loki nods. "Baby, I could give her a look if you wanted."

Something dangerous briefly flashes in his eyes before its gone. "Wendy's my girl, Tony. My whole world. Are you sure that you know what you're doing?"

The prospect of getting his hands on something he can build is making Tony's mouth water.

"Dollface, I'm Tony Fucking..." Tony feels like he's hit a brick wall. He doesn't know what to put in that sentence where his father's name should have gone.

Tony suddenly feels sick. He hardly hears Loki finish his conversation with George.

"Is your last name like really long and Italian and embarrassing or something?"

Tony doesn't remember ever being Italian a day in his life, but he looks up at Loki's make-up smeared face and the love-bites stacked like buttons down the column of his throat, and suddenly feels every point where their bodies touch like liquid lightning, and figures 'why the fuck not?'.

"Yeah, hardly even know how to say it. Every time I try my tongue actually falls out of my mouth."

"Charming."

There's a knock on the door.

"Just a second!"

Tony begins to scramble for at least a scarf when he feels a hand on his shoulder. Loki shakes his head and rips the sheet off of Tony and tosses it away.

"Stay right here." Says Loki and Tony feels strangely like the hangman's got his eye on him as he hears Loki let George in and lead him to the bedroom.

When the man walks into the room he turns bright red.

"If Jack here's gonna be your live in can you at least put a loin cloth on him or something?"

Tony kind of wants to die.

"Now George, play nice. Tony's going to fix Wendy."

"You sawed the bloody thing in half! I don't see-"

"Come here baby, take a look at my firstborn."

"I'd hate to have seen that birth." Says Tony as he tries to leap toward the instrument and ends up groaning in pain before gingerly maneuvering himself onto the floor.

George's mustache twitches with disapproval.

"My vagina ached for days." Says Loki as he exhales smoke. There's a cigarette dangling from his fingers.

"I can relate."

"Oh christ!" Says George as he tears at his temples with blunt fingers, as if trying to pound the mental images he's receiving to dust.

Tony looks down at the guitar. It's quite literally been sawed in half, and he's got six ideas of how to put it back together. But first he's got to know:

"Where did you get a fucking saw, Loki?"

"Met the devil at the crossroads. Gave me the fastest hands south of Mississippi and a saw."

"In return for what?"

"Pussy still aching, baby?"

"Can you fix the damn thing!?" Splutters George and suddenly Tony feels like himself, and everything is right with the world.

"Yeah, but I'm gonna need a few things."

"Name it!" George is desperate to leave and Tony doesn't blame him. His balls aren't itchy really, but he gives them a loving scratch anyway.

"Bad puppy. Not in front of the guests."

Tony bites off a chunk of the rolled up newspaper Loki tries to playfully smack him in the face with. He spits out the newspaper on George's feet.

"Wrenches, washers, rosewood, pliers, a soldering iron, a cheeseburger-"

"A cheeseburger?" Asks George.

"Make it three." Loki Amends with a wave of his cigarette. He spreads ash all over the carpet.

"None of that, Wendy needs a sterile environment."

"I guess we should move her off the bed then."

"Mother of the year? Maybe you should try again in a few lifetimes."

"I'll have you know that I'm a wonderful mother!"

"You sawed your child in half, Loki. And you don't even remember doing it."

Loki has discovered a way to pout and smoke simultaneously.

Tony thinks he's some sort of gesturing Gallileo.

"Well, that's why Daddy's gonna fix it, right?"

Something about being called Daddy answers the question Tony was asked for him.

"Oh mama, you ain't never seen a guitar as fixed as Wendy will be."

Loki smiles at him and he smiles back.

"Anything else you need?"

Tony's forgotten that George is even there.

He begins his list. Over again. This time he throws in a bottle of Merlot for Wendy's mama.

* * *

Stormy: I'm like Steven Moffat+ the ability to write characters that aren't straight white men. Basically, RUN.

hulky: Thanks! And angst is like crack man. And shipping is like lighting your pipe. And that's cool, acid can be a good time.

Layla: Oooh. Cool. I'm glad it had it's intended effect!

Shucky: Ilu2 bb. And nope. haha.

DX: Thanks!


	23. Chapter 23

Usually when Tony is working on something he could keep his head bowed and hands busy through a nuclear holocaust.

The mass destruction of humanity and all of its innovations, history, art, culture, and potential is one thing.

The noises Loki is making in the deep red and gold wingback chair across the room are another thing entirely.

He sounds like there should be someone in that chair with him, teasing him blind.

When Tony looks over Loki's got a hand wrapped around his thick, straining erection. It's the only flash of skin poking out of his black silk kimono aside from his hands, feet, and a long white v where the material gaps leading up to his neck.

"Do you mind?" Tony's knee deep in wires and his mouth is going dry.

"Not at all, darling." When Loki starts to stroke himself he throws his head back and moans.

"Do you want me to electrocute myself?"

"I think we've already-ah-established that I'd much prefer you alive."

"That's comforting."

Tony watches as the head of Loki's cock starts to flush red.

"Baby, I just love a man whose good with his hands."

"Well, love him later."

"But I want to love him now."

"But what about Wendy."

"Fuck Wendy."

"Sexy. But where do I put it in?"

Tony goes back to tinkering with Wendy. He's cutting and pulling and arranging bits and pieces when suddenly a particularly loud moan from the chair causes his cock to twitch in such a way that makes further concentration impossible.

"Daddy," Breathes Loki from the chair and he's pouting and smoking and jerking off at the same time.

Tony is impressed.

He's also really fucking turned on.

"Daddy, I want to show you something."

Loki's sitting like a whore with one hand between his legs and the other holding the cigarette between his lips. Tony plucks it from between his lips and takes a drag as he plants himself between Loki's spread thighs.

"Yeah?" He says and Loki smirks.

"I want to show you something."

"And what's that, baby?"

"My cock, Daddy."

Tony doesn't know what to do with himself.

But that's never stopped him before and it's sure as fuck not gonna stop him now.

"Oh I see it. Couldn't behave yourself for a minute. Couldn't wait while I was working, could you?"

Loki shakes his head and how easily he can transform into something so childlike might have impressed Tony if he had any blood left to devote to being impressed.

"What did I tell you?"

"That you were gonna finish Wendy after you gave me a good suck. That you were gonna suck me dry, daddy."

Tony knows that, that isn't true. He finds himself quite inclined to believe Loki anyway.

"Oh yeah?"

"Mmm-hmm." Says Loki and Tony sinks between his legs. He finds himself face to face with Loki's tightly drawn sack. He pushes his nose in softly and inhales, just to see.

Loki groans. Tony palms himself through his jeans and finds his mouth hovering near Loki's little pink hole. He takes Loki's ass in his hands and pulls his cheeks apart.

"Darling, what-" Loki's broken character and that's enough to convince Tony that he's on the right track. He starts to circle that hole with a single finger, lightly feeling the texture of the rim and watching it wink open and shut in pursuit of friction.

Tony wants in, and suddenly he remembers that Loki had used something to slick him up first.

He figures that Loki's own cum is slippery enough to get the job done, and he pumps his cock till he's leaking in order to get his fingers nice and wet.

He starts with one and slowly slides it in. Tony's done this with girls enough to know the basic mechanics. He can play a pussy like a violin. He figures this will kind of be like playing a cello.

He slides in and out and feels Loki barely start to open up around him. He doesn't really know enough to be a proper judge of these things, but he thinks that someone like Loki shouldn't be so tight.

"Another." Says Loki and Tony can physically feel him stretch around his fingers. The feeling of his own fingers rubbing against one another slick with cum in that tight heat makes Tony's breath catch.

He wriggles them experimentally, stroking and sliding against Loki's insides just feeling him squirm when suddenly Loki let's out a soft moan.

It takes Tony a minute to find that spot again but when he's done he's certain to rub his fingers against it. Again. And again. And again.

"More." Groans Loki and Tony snakes another finger inside him and gasps when his hole squeezes tight around him.

"Fuck." Tony presses up against his prostate even harder and Loki shifts his entire body downwards, grinding against his fingers.

The room is silent aside from their breathing and soft grunts as Loki takes his lower lips between his teeth and rocks against Tony's hand.

"Talk to me!"

Tony's never heard Loki whine before.

"What...do you want me to say?"

Tony twists his fingers and Loki keens.

"Tell me! Tell me...oh, Daddy, talk to me."

"I...I...umm..."

"Don't you want me to cum, Daddy?"

"Yeah, but not until I say. You, got that?"

"But Daddy-"

"No, Loki." Growls Tony. "You're going to do what I fucking tell you to do." By the end of that sentence he's practically yelling and Loki's looking up at him through his lashes like a frightened child.

"I'm sorry I made you angry."

Tony knows that Loki really isn't sorry. In fact, he's probably never been sorry for anything he's done in his entire fucking life. The bastard couldn't find the word 'remorse' in the dictionary if he had a magnifying glass and three guys to do it for him.

Suddenly Tony's plunging in and out of his hole like he wants to tear him in half.

Loki's loving it.

"Do you want to punish me, Dad-"

Before he can finish Tony's backhanded him. Loki's eyes are wide and shocked and Tony does it again as he pumps his fingers in and out of him relentlessly.

Loki let's out cry after cry as Tony pounds his face and his ass, chanting curses like a meditative mantra.

"Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."

Suddenly Loki's spitting out blood and it's running out of his nostrils and Tony feels his erection wilt to nothing. He's relieved when Loki's finished. The man seems to cave in on himself as he cums.

Some hits Tony and he jumps away from Loki like he's been burned.

"I'm gonna wash up and finish Wendy." He says sheepishly before shuffling away as best as he can with a pronounced limp.

Loki watches him go, contemplatively massaging his sore jaw.

* * *

Comfy: Yeah, you take two people with the emotional intelligence of kindergarteners and add boners and anger and well...

Dx: thanks?

Stormy: AH I JUST FUCKING HATE ODD NUMBERS I CAN'T NOPE WON'T AH. AND MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH . I told tumblr that this thing grew a plot. And I wasn't joking. And that's very flattering. I'm glad that you enjoy this story so much. :) It warms my cockles.

FGS: A physics grad student once invented a roller coaster that's supposed to kill you, but make you die of euphoria as you are squished by g-forces. He is an inspiration to me. That's kind of what I want this story to be like for the characters and the readers.

Layla: I realize that putting this after a chapter of porn is kind of not effective, but this has grown a plot kind of. And isn't just entirely porn. It's got a sequel man.

Wolfy: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Thanks man. My mind is like a rubix cube with dolphins instead of colored squares.

Nyann: Ah. As I said before, Jennifer Anniston=nope. I tend to prefer 70's lesbian vampire films and not Jennifer Anniston. There's actually a lot of actresses I can't stand. It makes me wonder if I'm actually kind of self-loathing and weirdly sexist or just good at spotting talented people, as I'm not thrilled with most actors either.

hulky: ZE SO CALLED PLOT I KEEP PROCLAIMING EXISTS. IT THICKENS. And yeah, especially the shippers of obscure ships. They sit there like 'DOES ANYONE HAVE MORE OF MY OTP' 'WHERE CAN I GET MORE OF MY OTP' 'THESE PEOPLE USED TO SHELL OUT MY OTP BUT THEN THEY MOVED ON TO MORE POPULAR OTPS AND FUUUUCKKKK' 'I. NEED. MY. FUCKING. OTP.'

cunling: LOL. So awks. And I changed my url twice last week and forgot to update the link here. lol. First I was the mittcro-romnicon, then I was tea-j-eckelburgers, and then I settled on hungryhungryhiddlestoner. I just fixed the link. Thanks for reminding me! You could also just follow me on tumblr if you wanted, and then we could be tumblr bros, and you could have all of the citrus fruit you wanted. Awwwwyyyyyeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh hhhhhhh.

Loki'd: If you are still alive after this chapter, I want you to know that I love your username.


	24. Chapter 24

Loki has been sitting in a chair chain smoking and drinking glasses of Merlot for seven hours when George comes and tells them they've got an hour to get ready for their flight out of Orlando.

That gives Tony just enough time to finish Wendy.

Wendy is a twenty year old Gibson Les Paul Goldtop. By the time Tony's done with her gold paint gleams brighter than the entire overly-gold Giancarlo.

Tony presents Wendy to her mother with an uncertain little grin.

"Here you go, babe." He says and Loki takes the instrument into his lap and hugs it to his body. He looks like he's been handed the universe. He kisses Wendy's neck before turning his attention back to Tony.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" He ask softly. "She doesn't have any strings."

Tony wants to be mad but he has a feeling that's supposed to be a thank you because Loki is taking the time to slowly kiss every last one of his fingers like they've single handedly cast the heavens and sculpted the earth.

Tony wonders just how drunk he is and if he's on anything. He watches as Loki places Wendy on the floor and before Tony knows whats happening there are hands on his hips and he's being pulled into a lap full of kimono.

"Wine?" Asks Loki.

"Why not?"

Tony feels like he's wrapped in a silk cocoon and Loki's feeding him wine from a glass rimmed and striped with gold. Fingers are teasing the shaggy hairs at the nape of his neck.

He's almost fallen into a light doze when he hears the door opened.

"Mr. Lauff we've got-holy fucking christ what has he done to the room-Oh my god, he's fixed your guitar!"

Tony doesn't particularly like or dislike George.

He'd just rather never hear him speak again.

"I told you my baby could do it." Says Loki.

"But you sawed it in half!"

"I'm a genius." Says Tony and Loki laughs brightly.

George looks like he wants to doubt this but, facing the evidence, can't.

"Get dressed, the both of you. We've got to be out of here in ten minutes."

"Roger that. And get me some strings, George. you know what I like."

George nods and is gone.

Tony tries to extricate himself from Loki's lap but he won't let him go.

"Where are we going?"

"Hmmm."

"We're going to be getting on a plane in an hour. Where are we going?"

"Fuck me if I know." Says Loki and this time when Tony tries to get up he lets him.

"Got an extra kimono anywhere?"

"Always for you, darling."

Tony thinks there's probably something wrong with him.

Having a man get off the plane the second he and Loki get on because he doesn't want to spend four hours with a couple of faggots should probably not make him smile.

There's something about pissing people off that Tony finds deeply satisfying.

"You are the single strangest human being I've ever met." Loki tells him as he cradles his stringless guitar and pack of fresh strings. Tony's got a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other and when he shrugs he sloshes wine and spreads smoke.

"I'm not the easiest person in the world to lie to, but you seem to manage just fine."

The almost reverent look in Loki's eyes stops Tony from being offended. Somehow, he knows that that's a compliment.

He's also too busy being scared shitless to be offended.

"Know how to string a guitar, little liar?"

Tony is thankful for cigarettes. He makes a show of taking a long hard drag, stalling for time to clear his thoughts before he settles on a response.

"No." He eventually says, and wants to slap himself for taking a good three minutes to come up with such a nuanced and complex response.

"Well, I'm going to teach you. I'm sure you'll pick it up before you know it."

Tony spends almost the rest of the flight learning that he's tone deaf.

When Loki manages to have the damn thing tuned in a minute flat Tony wants to strangle something.

"It's really quite simple, darl-"

"If you want me to smash that thing over your head keep right on, darling."

Loki does that thing where he pouts and smokes at the same time and Tony can't help but smile.

"Darling is my word." Says the rock god. "You can't have it."

"You can't own words, Darling."

"I can own whatever I want, Darling. It's called capitalism."

"Actually Darling, I believe that means you own whatever you can afford."

"Or what you can steal." And when Loki kisses him it tastes like wine and Tony feels like he could die happy.

"This is your captain speaking, Letting you know that we'll be landing in Atlanta in approximately thirty minutes, over."

"I thought that place was underwater." Tony pours a smidgeon of wine into another glass and drops what's left of his smoldering filter in it.

"That's one way to describe it." Says Loki and Tony wants to ask what he means, but Loki's gone. He strumming and plucking at Wendy's strings and seemingly humming five tunes in and out of time, weaving them around each other.

Tony wonders if this is the song about him.

* * *

Stormy: Yeah, the way I look at it Loki is a bit of everything. My Loki is a combination of comics and films, and very heavily mythology based.

FGS: Reading smut in public is always a good time. It's like the second you try and read about some peen everybody wants in on it. lol. Hope you have a pleasant vacation.

Layla: Loki and Tony are like a blowtorch and a keilbasa made of dynamite. Glad you liked the chapter.

Nyann: What is 'wrong' anyway?

hulky: I just enjoy dom/sub dynamics. I like to go back to things I wrote from a couple years ago that I forgot existed like that and just ASDFSGDFGSDFGSDFJKL all over the place. Glad you enjoyed the chapter.

Loki'd: Daddy does what he wants.


	25. Chapter 25

Atlanta is hot and busy and a few pieces of the picturesque old south blend seamlessly with the very heights of modern technology.

It makes Tony miss the old world charm and ancient oak trees which have the city of New Orleans wrapped in a mossy wooden web that feels more like a warm blanket.

Considering he didn't leave the hotel room once in Orlando, Tony thinks he's going to give Atlanta a spin anyway.

This is very convenient as the second they get to their hotel room Loki more or less pushes Tony out of it.

"I'm writing." Loki says. "I need to be alone. Go find Jonce or Lee or Peters."

Tony wonders who those people are before remembering that he's technically crashing Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost's band tour, which means that, logically, Loki Lauff must have a band. And that, logically, these people must have names.

Tony is about to complain when suddenly a leather jacket, a pack of cigarettes, a pack of matches, and a hundred dollars is chucked out of the crack in the door at his head.

"I'll see you at the show Friday." Says Loki before slamming the door shut. Tony can live with this. He's sliding the leather jacket on over his kimono and his newly acquired treasures into the pockets when he realizes that he doesn't even know which hotel he's in.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" He asks an elderly woman who just happens to be passing by. She stops and looks at him with wide eyes. "Can you tell me which hotel this is?"

"The Meridian." She says and stalks away as if offended by his very presence.

"Thanks dollface." Says Tony to the empty hallway before lighting a cig and going out in search of Jonce or Lee or Peters.

They find him first. He's wandering aimlessly around the Meridian, soaking in the awful plastic turquoise wall paper when suddenly he feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Didn't know he lets you out alone."

Tony looks up and sees Peters standing in front of him. Without the insane outfits and stage make up Tony almost always sees him in he looks so normal that it's eerie. He's a somewhat pasty white guy of a middling size with dishwater eyes and the same color brown hair that almost everyone seems to have.

"Broke the leash." Says Tony and Peters hands twitch. Without drum sticks in his hands he always looks slightly dazed and confused.

"It's strange. I feel like you've been with us forever and I've never said a word to you."

"I'm a shy one, Darling." Says Tony and Peters shakes his head. It hits Tony that Peters' accent is slightly English but also slightly ten or fifteen other things.

"I feel like a walk, you got anything a little less...far out to put on?"

Tony hadn't even realized that he'd been living exclusively in Loki's clothes for weeks. He doesn't know how he feels about this.

"Define far out?"

"Gotcha. Don't worry about it. Jonce is about your size, slight little man. I'll see if he'll lend us some trousers at least."

It turns out Jonce isn't in, but Peters manages to break into his room in a millisecond by jimmying the lock with some folded up paper.

"Spend so much on wall paper in these places that they haven't got the bread left for a security deposit, if you know what I mean."

Tony laughs easily and freely. After the full-time wildly spiraling walking smoking emotional apocalypse that Loki manages to be, Peters is like putting cool water on a burn.

Peters is quick to smile and quick to laugh and quick to joke. Tony gets the feeling that some comets skate by the atmosphere more often than Peters gets angry.

"Yeah man." Says Tony as Peters pulls a pair of long white denim bell-bottoms out of a drawer.

"Here, I'm just gonna leave Joncey a note telling him where his pants walked off to. He owes me some hard quid in Mary Jane and I'm not collecting on it so I don't think he'll be too cross about things. Change up, love."

With that there's a pair of pants in his arms. He looks over to see Peters scribbling something on a receipt on one of the rooms dressers.

As he shimmies out of Loki's kimono and puts on the pants he feels absurdly naked. Wrapping himself in his leather jacket makes him feel a bit better.

"Oh, you've got it bad, huh?"

Tony realizes he's smelling the jacket a second too late.

"Oh don't be ashamed. I mean, your taste is kind of shit but my last girl, back in London, tried to rob me bind while I was sleeping so I can't really say much about any of that."

The pants are so tight that Tony is momentarily distracted by the need to breathe and not vomit. "What do you mean, 'shit'?" He finally gasps out.

Peters looks as unimpressed as it's possible to be while still being completely polite.

"Loki picked you up in L.A, right?"

Tony nods.

"Since then we've been to New Orleans, Orlando, and now Atlanta. It's been just over two weeks and I'm pretty sure you've spent every woken moment with the bloke. You can't tell me that you haven't noticed that he's a bit...spare?"

Tony can think that all he wants but hearing this Peters lay it all on the table makes his hands ball into fists.

"Now don't get cross with me, mate. I love Loki. I really do. We started this band together, him and me. We've been the thickest of thieves for, well, four years, now."

There's something about Peters that makes you feel like if you're not calm you're wrong. Tony hates being wrong.

"Well, up until a couple of months ago, leastways."

"What happened?" Tony asks and suddenly he realizes that the air feels different and when he looks around he realizes that they're walking around a busy street in the sunshine, and cars are flying by.

Tony wonders if he's going absolutely crazy.

"Well, Loki's way into magic. Like really deep, the deepest I think you can get. I've seen him do some things, and half the time I go on pretending I didn't just to keep my realities straight, if you can feel that?"

"Yeah, man." Says Tony and suddenly he's incredibly grateful that Loki kicked him out for a day or so. He'd almost forgotten that there was a world outside of the man, and being immersed in it suddenly is like being lifted from the center of a fog.

"Nick a fag?" Asks peters and Tony looks at him blankly.

"You've got a pack in your pocket."

Tony reaches down to the box of cigs in his pocket and remembers that whole American English vs English English thing. He hands Peters one and takes one for himself.

"Thanks. You're a star." Says Peters and lights a match for them both. "But leastways, about six months ago, while we were recording the album, Loki went wrong. Straight sixes and sevens. Seriously."

"Sixes and Sevens?" Asks Tony.

"Oh come on, no one's that public school. It's plain english."

Tony has no idea what's happening.

"Are you an Englishman or aren't you?"

"Peters, I'm American."

"No."

"Born in L.A."

"Well then you've nicked Loki's accent along with his clothes because you talk posher than him, and he's the prince of posh gits."

"Darling, I do not..."

Tony suddenly feels like he's in a horror film. His voice doesn't even sound like the one he's had for nineteen years anymore, and according to Peters its only been two weeks.

Jesus christ.

"But, anyway, Loki always does this thing where he meditates. Sometimes he's gone in his head or whatever he goes for days. Once he dehydrated himself doing it. Had to get him to hopsital."

Jesus Christ.

"It's like his body can't handle his soul man. Like it just shouldn't be there."

Tony has always thought of Loki more as like a collective embodiment of impulses than an actual human being. He'd never really thought of him as a thing with a soul.

"He was always a strange bloke. Really quiet with almost everybody unless he wanted something from them, but he could probably cheat the devil if he wanted. And he has. Walked into the White Clay's record office in London and talked us into a deal. We didn't even have four songs done yet. The guy really is magic. Seemed to like me but not really anybody else. Like I said, knew him all that time, and never saw him smoke a fag or have a glass of wine. Really on the straight, if you see what I mean."

The Loki Tony knows keeps Quaaludes on his private bar, in a Batman pez dispenser.

He wonders if Peters is high.

"He'd never seem to have anyone either, if you follow. No birds, no blokes, no nothing. Always on his own just watching. And looking like he wanted in but didn't know how to get there."

The Loki Tony knows finds someone to fuck every time he gets a bit hard so he doesn't have to take care of it himself.

"So, that was up until six months ago. He phoned me, told me he was going on one of his little personal vacations, you know, like into his head-land or whatever. Back then we were in the middle of recording the album, so it really wasn't a good time for that. He ended up not showing up to recording for two days, and on the third we went to his flat to get him but didn't answer, so we ended up doing some housebreaking."

Peters takes an agitated puff of his cigarette and Tony almost doesn't want to know what follows.

"We found him lying on the floor. It didn't even look like anything had happened to him. It was like he'd just stopped. At the A&E they couldn't tell us either and Loki never explained. Still hasn't. He was in a coma for three days."

It suddenly occurs to Tony that people like Loki, whose automatic answer to everything is to take something, drink something, or fuck something usually aren't the happiest of people, regardless of what they pretend to be.

It also occurs to him that his immediate reaction to this news, which is to go drown in a vat of whiskey, is nothing like that at all.

"When he woke up first thing he did was have a smoke and a drink. Been at it ever since. I watched him tear through speed and dope and pills like they were flavors of ice cream, man. He puts himself in stupid situations for a laugh. He walks down roads by himself. Goes everywhere in his stage outfits, looking so queer hoping that someone will try to beat it out of him. I once watched him get on his knees and...and...he fucked fifteen guys in a row with his mouth, just taking it. I don't know what the hell his problem is, but he's, well, he was never really happy, but he's something else now."

Tony remembers Loki's bleeding, blissfully curled mouth as he hit him in the face until there was so much blood that Tony just couldn't be hard anymore.

"What do you think happened to him?" Asks Tony as he flicks the very end of his cig and grinds it into the ground under his shoe.

"I was hoping you'd know."

"Why the hell would I know?"

"After his last trip into the ether he kind of stopped being cool with me. Think about it? He's our lead vocalist, right? How much time does he spend hanging out with us? He doesn't. He just keeps finding strangers to fuck and shit to take and bottles to drink. I'm a cool guy, but he takes all of it to suicidal levels. And I'm not cool with that. Once I tried to talk to him about it and things got...kind of physical."

"So, if I'm just another stranger he's fucking what makes you think he's pouring out his heart all over me?"

"Because you aren't."

Tony kind of wants to laugh. He also kind of wants to cry.

"When Loki looks around at the world it's like everything's just a grey blob. Things are things an he knows what they are but nothing means anything to him. He was always sort of like that, but its worse now."

Tony knows exactly what he means.

"Loki looks at you like you're made of gold, man. Like you're the first interesting thing he's ever seen."

Tony thinks that Peters is possibly certifiable. Loki's answer to his near death was to dope him up and go for a drive until he chilled the fuck out about it.

"I need some time to think." Says Tony and he more or less sprints into traffic, nearly getting nailed by a taxi in his mad dash across the street.

"Full blown loons, the both of you are!" Yells Peters at his rapidly retreating back.

* * *

Stormy: YES. YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESY ES. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FICS I HAVE BEGUN ONLY TO DISGUSTEDLY GIVE UP IN A RAGE BECAUSE LOKI IS CHARACTERIZED LIKE THIS GOOD-FOR-NOTHING SIMULACRUM OF SOME DUMB PASSY-ASS ROMANCE NOVEL BITCH WITH ALL OF THE AGENCY OF A MOLDY LOAF OF SHIT. FUCKBALLS. WHAT PART OF 'HE IS A GOD' and 'HE THINKS GENOCIDE ON A PLANET THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM WILL SOLVE HIS DADDY ISSUES' FUCKING ESCAPES PEOPLE. IT'S THE WORST IN AU'S. IF I SEE ONE MORE AU WHERE LOKI IS SOME FUCKING HIPSTER GARY STU BITCH AND THOR IS THE ACTUAL DEVIL OR TOO STUPID TO FUNCTION AND EVERYONE RAPES LOKI BECAUSE HE'S SO BEAUTIFUL AND IT TAKES PLACE IS A COFFEE SHOP AND TONY STARK IS A WALKING PENIS WITH NO HIGHER FUCNTIONS I AM GOING TO BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHICH MOTHERFUCKER I'M GOING TO BURN DOWN, BUT IT'S GOING TO BE LIEK A FIREWORKS DISPLY OF HOMICIDE.

FGS: Thanks man. And to be honest, your vacation kind of sounds like it would be like the journey of a quirky side character in a film. Also, hand turned fountain pens *drools*.

Lanka: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. And thanks :)

hulky: Well, I mean, it might have come a little bit later than you wanted, but it still came.

comfy: That is very, very accurate. Seriously. This has grown a plot. I don't know how, but it did.


	26. Chapter 26

Tony wakes up with beastly hangover in a prison cell with an indeterminate number of other guys. He figures he'll get around to counting them when he doesn't feel like he's died.

His jacket and shoes are gone.

He kind of hates his life.

"Motherf-" He begins but finds his throat too dry to finish it.

He doesn't know how long he lays in cotton-mouthed purgatory with his temples throbbing.

"Rise and shine, sweetheart." Tony hears the mocking southern accented voice but doesn't want to obey it. He feels like his body has been put through a cheese grater. "Gotta make your phone call."

That gets him going and before he knows whats happening he's got cuffs on and is standing in front of a lonely telephone jutting out of a white blank wall.

"Make it snappy, son."

Tony manages to cough up the word 'Phone book' and some amount of time later one is dropped into his hands. He drops it onto the floor. Bending down to get it almost makes him physically ill.

"Shit! Which hotel is it?" He mutters. He can picture the face of the old woman he'd asked and he can see her lips forming the sounds of the words.

"The Meridian!" He cries and it makes him cough until his throat burns.

The cop whistles.

"Wowee. What you doin at the Meridian? That place costs an arm and a leg."

"Just traveling." Says Tony as he listens to the phone ring and holds his breath.

"Hello, This is the Meridian Atlanta. How may I help you?"

"Can you put me through to Loki Lauff."

"You're joshing, boy." Says the cop.

"Do you happen to know his room number, sir? And who may I ask is calling?"

"It's Tony. I'm calling from..." Tony turns and looks at the cop. "Where is this?"

The cop takes the phone from him.

"Hello, this is Officer Harmon Gifford with the city. I'm sorry to have bothered you, this boy's clearly a bit touched. Just wasted his phone call. Sorry again to have bothered you folks. You have a good day, now."

Tony can't even believe it. He wants to cry as the phone is hung up again by one Harmon Gifford.

"Are all cops fucking stupid?" Blurts Tony before he can stop himself and the look in Harmon Gifford's eyes tells him that things aren't about to get any better for him.

* * *

hulky: Thanks man! I was afraid that people might be averse to plot but it hit me and I couldn't not so I'm glad that introduction of it pleased you.

Layla: As a person who steals all of my friend's accents by accident I couldn't not. And it's also a completely new form of ownership. Tony doesn't even have his own voice anymore. I might just be sick, but I find that kind of hot.

iwriteyourstory: Thank you! I take my loki like I take my coffee, dark enough to kill most people.

Cap: Thanks! And trust me, everything comes full circle in Aof or semi-circle in AoF and full-circle in the sequal.

ainda: Anytime man. I aim to please

comfy: I actually put some time into Loki's bandmates. I don't really like throw away OC's. Glad you like them.

Satary: BECAUSE UNLIKE SOME CHARACTERS PLAYED BY TOM HIDDLESTON I AM ACTUALLY A SADIST. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHA.

Stormy: Ahahahaha. I can dig that, but I just want to make it clear that my violent reaction against poorly constructed and cliched portrayals of Loki is not a violent reaction against him being a sympathetic character in general. I think that a large part of what makes him so seductive (to me as a writer at least) are the possibilities that lay within expressions of his idiosyncrasies and complexities. Having him be pure evil is just as disinteresting to me as having him be the simpering equivalent of the girl in every anime porn who pisses herself when she cums, against her will of course. I think that as long as Loki's tap-dancing on someone's preconceived lines or fucking with expectations or hard to predict or has unclear motivations you're doing it right. Whether your Loki is light or dark leaning, if his motivations, desires, and functions are easily definable within the context of your story, I think you should probably stop. However, I have read some h/c fics where Loki is none of these things and it still works for me, it's just that these are few and far between.

FGS: I knew it was you, haha. I deduced it. Your vacation sounds pretty awesome. Also, I would like to have a sexual relationship with your pen. And everything you write is genius. Seriously. I have no criticisms of you, other than that I don't write like you and it makes me sad. So while you provide me with joy you also provide me with intense sadness. Xe rre changed my life. And the fun you can have playing with the complexities is totally what it's all about, man. I mean, it's like finger painting with psychological complexes. It's fantastical.

Loki'd: Thanks man. I try.

Piny: YAY. I am glad the introduction of plot is being well-recieved. I wasn't sure if it would be.

Fire: There are good fics and bad fics. Felicity G Silvers, who continues to speak to me for unknown reasons, writes some of the best shit ever. Raging about bad fic is so much fun though. I have considered starting a blog dedicated to bad fic rage/ critical evaluation of it for a long time, but I'd rather spend my time making my own writing as good as possible, and reading the best shit I can, than focusing on other people's miserable failure. Most people who write shit like that don't even think they're failing in the first place. Making them understand what's wrong with their character construction or plot arc is like trying to make a squid understand pole vaulting. That is not my job. I'd much rather find awesome authors and tell them how much I love them and how clever they are.

xD: Thanks man! And I love posh Tony. I just want to squish him. It will probably def come back at some point.

Nyann: I know all about your name change young lady. hahaha. And that actually does get resolved, it's just I'm trying to get across how insular and self-centric life can become when you're up to your dick in illegal substances. This whole fic honestly takes place over about a month and a half, but it feels like a year. Or at least, that's what I want it to feel like.


	27. Chapter 27

Tony would say he's an expert in the surreal.

He might even venture to say that Dali has nothing on him, and that there's nothing surprising that life could possibly throw at him ever again.

When Harmon Gifford presents an impossibly tall man to him, whose wearing jeans, a flannel, and a cowboy hat, and who somewhat resembles Loki but can't possibly be, Tony wonders what in god's name is actually happening.

Tony watches Harmon Gifford come toward the cell with one eye and Loki with the other. This strangely homely looking Loki's got one hand stuffed in the pocket of his jeans and tony watches as he takes it out right behind Gifford's back, flashing his claw-like talons.

He flashes his attention back to Gifford, who actually looks apologetic.

"You're brother explained the situation to me." The cop says softly as he opens the cell door. Tony's a genius, but it wouldn't have taken one to know that some sort of con is taking place. Tony plays along.

"I'm sorry about your father, son."

Tony just looks at the ground and feels one of Loki's hands curl around his bicep.

"Thank you, sir. He didn't mean no harm. Father's not even been...been gone two days yet. He's hurting. I promise I'll keep a better eye on him, it's just I ain't really been myself neither since..."

Tony is glad he's not drinking anything, because Loki's sultry southern drawl would have made him spit it everywhere. He's even deepened his voice and butched it out a little.

Tony almost forgets that Loki's got waist-length hair piled under that cowboy hat. He watches as Loki talks the cop out of pressing any charges or paying any bail. They leave with condolences and an offer of help from one Harmon Gifford.

They walk out into the afternoon sun and Tony can't think of a single thing to say.

"That was..." He tries and Loki smirks.

"Don't mention it, sugah baby." He says with a high pitched feminine giggle and Tony swears that he can feel his head physically spin.

Loki takes off his hat and black hair spills down his back in inky tendrils.

Tony's breath catches.

"I really do need to keep you on a leash." Says Loki as he hails a cab and Tony groans.

"I don't know what happened last night, and I don't want to."

"Darling Gifford said-to the Arch Street Theatre-that someone's dog did a shit on the sidewalk and tried to leave so you pulled down your pants and started pissing all over the dog-"

"Shut up!" Tony rests his head against the cab's window. "You're lying."

"Maybe." Says Loki with a shit eating grin that Tony kind of wants to punch off his face, until he feels one of those long cool hands creep across the seat like a spider and tangle with his own. A feeling of peace begins to uncurl in the depths of his chest.

"I'm not letting you out of my sight ever again." Loki whispers.

"You can try." Tony whispers back and there's something very dark in Loki's eyes.

"After I play you the song I wrote for you I'm going to have to pry you off of me with a wrench if I ever want to be alone again." His tone is teasing but Tony caught the spark of ice in his hands and felt it chill numbingly at his bones.

"That's not how a wrench works."

"Oh really?"

"Not at all."

"Well, it's a good thing you're here to disabuse me of my silly tool-related notions."

Tony squeezes Loki's hand and Loki squeezes back.

"It's also a good thing that you're so good with your hands because I just might have-"

"Jesus, Loki. What did you break this time?"

"I may have hit Lee's favorite bass with an electric hammer."

Tony doesn't even know where to begin.

"A couple of times."

"Why the hell would you do that?"

"Because you were gone."

The openness in Loki's words and expressions is something new entirely, and the fact that Tony can understand his logic makes his breath catch in his throat.

"How do you even keep getting your hands on power tools?"

"I am infinitely resourceful, puddin." Loki's switch from posh git to southern belle gives Tony whiplash.

"Peters told me that he told you some things about me. And you responded by running headfirst into traffic and immediately getting drunk off your tits."

Loki's voice is soft and Tony suddenly feels ashamed of himself.

"What did he tell you that frightened you so much?"

"Well...first...it's just...that's not really how this...thing between us works."

Tony wants Loki to fill in the blanks. Loki apparently just wants to watch him squirm.

"I mean, what do we really know about each other?"

Loki sighs. "You are a nineteen year old probable technological genius with a streak of addict running through you faster than a river and an affinity for alcoholic beverages. You like boys, you like girls, you like the colors red and gold, and you pretend to be an idiot when, in reality, you have a wide breadth and depth of understanding. You are probably smarter than most of the people you have ever met, and you are tired of it. Whatever familial mess you've crawled out of has made you a talented, talented liar. It's also given you a love of angering people that surpasses any other love you will most likely ever feel, because you associate almost all emotion with pain, so you drink and you joke and you laugh instead of allowing yourself to feel."

Tony didn't feel this naked when Loki was inside him.

"Oh, you are also Italian."

It's not funny. None of it is, but Tony laughs anyway. The one untruth in the bunch of scythe-like analysis thrown out like an afterthought is just enough to tip the balance from horrifying to slightly less horrifying.

"You are also impossible to predict, despite how obvious you are."

The cab comes to a stop in front of Arch Street Theater.

"I better see you in the crowd. I've got something to give to you. Don't you run from me, Anthony." With that Loki's out of the cab and disappearing into the crowd that's already forming outside the theater.

The cab driver looks at Tony expectantly.

Tony hasn't even got shoes on. He sure as hell hasn't got any money on him.

He bolts.

* * *

Stormy: That kind of Loki is always fun. And I actually kind of enjoy the twilight films. They are hilarious. Everyone looks anemic and constipated simultaneously. Before I knew that Pattinson was an all right guy, I used to take mad joy in watching him play Edward because I knew how much he hated the whole thing.

FGS: Yeah, I'm kind of a great big bag of dicks sometimes, but my chapters are kind of what they are. Some come out of me around this length, and occasionally they are even longer, and some are just short. It tends to make people really angry when they are short, which I'm not gonna lie, I kind if enjoy. And I suppose I will have to find some other place to peddle my love than your writing utensils. Damn and Blast.

Sha-Lin: I read the first line of your review and was ready to whip out the chocolate and tissues. Sweet jesus. I thought I was about to be read the riot act. This was a nice plot twist. Thank you ever so! I'm trying to do a lot of things with this that I haven't really seen done anywhere yet, so it's cool that I could woo your expectations a little bit. And yeah man, Felicity is a boss. I read Xe Rre and was immediately like I will find this person on the internet and tell them I love them. My usual 'everyone-hates-you-don't-bother-anyone' instinct didn't even factor in. And I am also the worst reviewer in the universe so I can dig. haha.


	28. Chapter 28

Tony doesn't like to be backstage. He prefers to be lost in the crowd in the sea of bodies and stale breath and smoke.

He takes his place at the front and waits. The opener, that stoner chick who he still doesn't like, should have been out fifteen minutes ago.

He feels like Loki's cut him open, played with his insides, and rearranged his heart and his lungs and all the rest however he wanted. He feels scrambled and sick and terrified. He's managed to find a pair of shoes and a shirt and he still feels so very, very naked.

Tony's standing with his arms wrapped around himself. He can't even begin to imagine what kind of a song Loki's written for him and thinking about it is steadily driving him insane. He feels the urge to smoke like a kick in the stomach.

He sees a guy standing a person away with a wiry shocking mass of red hair. He's wearing a purple dress and he's holding a cigarette like its a joint.

"Hey man," Tony tries for smooth but he can feel his voice shaking. "Can I bum one?"

"Sorry man, this's my last one."

Tony knows that, that is possibly the biggest lie in the universe. If someone dumps you by saying 'It's not you it's me' it's more likely that they are telling the truth than if they tell you that they're down to their last cig, so they can't give you one.

Tony returns to his silent corner, despite the fact that the space between three girls in bright pink wigs and a guy in a dress is not really silent, nor is it a corner.

Tony is going to claw his own eyes out.

He suddenly thinks that he's going to murder someone if he can't get some tobacco in his body. He's like a giant itch waiting for a single scratch.

"I can spot you babe." Says one of the pink ladies, and they do introduce themselves, but Tony doesn't try all that hard to remember their names. He takes a cigarette from one of them and proceeds to make sweet fiery love to it.

The talk to him but he doesn't really pay that much attention. They clamor for his attention and they register no more on his radar than some flies might. He might feel bad about this, if his sense for the dramatic wasn't screaming at him that his whole entire fucking life was about to change.

Knowing that Loki knew almost everything about him made waiting for this song a strange kind of torture. His innately human instinct to not be naked in public is banging its head against the floor and screaming at him to run before it's too late.

When a tall man in jeans and plaid comes out on the stage it takes Tony a second to believe that it's Loki.

His dark hair is pulled back in a pony tail and he hasn't got shoes on. His feet are long and white and beautiful like the rest of him and Tony finds himself wishing that the man would go barefoot more often instead of his usual brightly colored boots and heels.

He hasn't got an ounce of make up on, and Tony can make out faint scars around his thin lips, like someone had sewn them shut.

Tony is captivated by them.

He feels like he's never actually seen Loki's face before, and realizes how strange that is all things considered.

The crowd is paying no attention to the normally dressed guy on stage, they probably assume he's working tech or something, and Tony doesn't understand how they can't see.

Loki's long, thick dark hair is pulled behind his ears and Tony wants to run his hands through it.

It's not until Loki's sat in front of two microphones and Wendy is brought out and sat in his lap that Tony realizes what is about to happen.

"Hello, Darling." Says Loki and the crowd's momentary shocked silence hits Tony like a slap across the face.

"Now, before panic starts, the opener for the tour, Mizandrine Walber, has had to skip back across the pond, so I'm going to play a little something for you before the real show starts."

The overjoyed wails and hollers of the crowd seem to shake the building.

"This is an old Jaques Brel composition called 'Port of Amsterdam', to start." Says Loki before clearing his throat and beginning to strum.

In the port of Amsterdam

There's a sailor who sings

Of the dreams that he brings

From the wide open sea

His voice is soft and as his fingers strum and make the proper chords Tony feels his mouth go dry. He feels like Loki's wasted in his usual bombastic spectacles, when he can sit and sing a simple song with such honest feeling that it's even more captivating-

"Awww! He's crying!" Squeals one of the Pink Ladies and the next thing he knows they are all hugging him and murmuring comforting things and telling him that he's adorable. Tony wishes that they would shut up and leave him alone.

He knows that he's adorable.

It's kind of his bread and butter, really.

He looks back up at Loki and sees him smirking at him and suddenly Tony remembers that Loki's song for him is looming out on the horizon, poking out of the water like a shark fin the size of a sail and teeth the size of human forearms.

Loki plays song after song after song. He plays 'Sell Me A Coat' with a jaunty grin , and 'In The Heat of the Morning' with the same. He plays obscure Beatles songs and well known old blues standards with pained warbling twists. He plays a couple of his band's own songs with various twists.

Tony feels like he's stalling just to kill him slowly.

The crowd is still clapping when Loki's dangerous grin softens into something else entirely.

"Now, this last song is something very, very new."

The audience's excitement is palpable.

"I wrote it yesterday and finished it this morning."

Tony thinks his heart has stopped.

"It's about someone I met on tour."

The audience's oooo's and ahhhh's feel like sticks and stones. Aimed straight at Tony's bones.

"A beautiful boy."

The audience goes completely insane. Tony suddenly can pinpoint every gay man in the room, simply because half of them are crying and the other half are comforting the crying ones. Most of them are holding hands.

There aren't as many as he'd thought.

"It's called The Ballad of Roman Red and Deifiction Serene."

Deifiction?

Tony wonders if Loki has invented a word for him. It sure as hell sounds like it. Then he realizes that, since Loki thinks he's Italian, he would probably be Roman Red and That Loki would be Deifiction Serene. In which case, that means Loki has invented a new word in the English language solely to describe himself.

Which is pretty fucking typical.

Pre-owned words wouldn't be shiny enough for him.

Tony smiles.

Loki clears his throat and begins to strum.

* * *

Stormy: Loooooookkkkiiiiiiiiiiiiii. I read some of the first book and Edward was kind of a hilarious sarcastic dick, but most of it was so boring that I couldn't even finish it. Also, the language is grotesque. A dead Edward is a good Edward in my book though.

Master: Thank you so much. That means a lot. I take everything I write really seriously and do my best to create something unique and beautiful and it makes me happy when people appreciate it. Also, in regards to your question, I haven't made it concretely explicit.

hulky: Thank you kindly!

FGS: Yeah, I'm kind of a great big bag of dicks sometimes, but my chapters are kind of what they are. Some come out of me around this length, and occasionally they are even longer, and some are just short. It tends to make people really angry when they are short, which I'm not gonna lie, I kind if enjoy. And I suppose I will have to find some other place to peddle my love than your writing utensils. Damn and Blast.

Sha-Lin: You're doing fine at reviewing, so relax. I haven't really read any frostiron in awhile, as Destiel and 00Q are swallowing my life, but I remember loving Xr Rre by Felicity G Silvers particularly. I've also always found the majority of the Loki/Tony Stark tag on Ao3 pretty solid. Occasionally there's a bad one, but that's just life.

siezure7: Oh my god. Thank you so much. I've seen you on tumblr all over the frostiron tag and I'm glad to finally talk to you. I'm glowing like a pregnant woman. I swear.

FGS: AH YOU'RE A SOUTHERN BELLE. That's so legit. I dig southern accents. Especially the New Orleans accent. I've been there a few times and every time I pick up the accent on accidentally-on-purpose. And Tony has so many problems.

xD: Thank you!

Loki'd: I just meant that he bolts from the cab. Not like the country or anything. Haha.


	29. Chapter 29

Tony isn't particularly musical, but something about whatever Loki's playing sets the room on the edge of a knife and he is suddenly hyperaware of his blood rushing violently beneath his paper-thin skin.

Tony watches as Loki breathes and those tiny little scars around the edges of his lips move as he breathes and prepares to sing.

"If you stared into the void and the void screamed back, baby you'd shake it

off your bleeding hands and

you thought me too good to be true till you knew that I'm not that good,

neither nor all that true to you"

Tony feels like everyone knows that Loki's singing about him and his face is on fire. He also feels like he's floating somewhere in space, because this strange, beautiful, and possibly demented creature was inspired by him to write a fucking song and that's something beautiful that not even the forest fire happening between his eyes and mouth can touch.

"If you ran away from home to join the circus, baby you've struck silver

off my tongue, but there is gold in the ether and

you thought me magic till you knew we

can never come clean, even if we do come true"

Tony doesn't know if this is Loki's way of saying that he wants them both to tell their secrets to one another or not, but suddenly he really wants to.

Whatever the hell that means.

The timber of Loki's voice shifts from loud and impassioned to soft and gentle and a collective chill seems to wrack the audience.

Loki looks uncontrollably sad. His voice warbles and breaks with it.

"You don't ask me questions

You don't want the answers

You don't want the silhouette

You don't want the dancer

You just want to forget

And baby I do too

Let me get lost in you

I don't want your name

I don't want your rose

I don't want your family tree

Just want you out of your clothes

I'll ride that household plague enough

fall from grace into graceless love

Let me get lost in you"

Loki's hands are moving so fast that Tony almost can't see them and his heart's pounding out of his chest and he doesn't know if he wants to sob or not. Before he can start to berate himself for being so wildly sentimental Loki starts to sing again.

"If you need a new face and name, daddy's money can build it

with your clever hands to cut it quick, our whispers can fill it

you can hack a hallowed hall out of the sky for a bell ring"

He stops and breathes and Tony breathes with him. Loki looks down at him and he looks back up and suddenly Tony notices that his face is wet with tears.

"Hush darling." Says Loki, directly to him and Tony forcefully tries to scrub the tears off of his skin as the whole audience pivots in his general direction, trying to figure out who their idol is talking to.

"Roman Red and Deifiction Serene!" Loki howls and the silence which follows is not that of a disinterested audience, but the silence of one that has been shocked beyond speech.

No one even claps.

"Your regularly scheduled programming will resume in, oh I don't really know, thirty minutes or so?" Loki tries for jovial but his voice sounds raw and open. He shoots Tony a meaningful look which Tony immediately understands.

He begins to disentangle himself from the Pink Ladies and sneak around to the back of the building, where people will be carrying things in and out and he'll be able to slip inside while avoiding most of the fan hoard.

"You're welcome." Says Loki before flouncing off the stage.

* * *

FGS: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE. STOP IT. YOU ARE MY FAVORITE.

Loki'd: Haha. Yeah. Sometimes I kind of do shit like that on purpose because I'm a dick.

xD: DAT SQUEE.

Stormy: YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE EITHER. BY THE MANY-LEGGED REINDEER WHO SCATTERS BOOT-MEET ACROSS THE FJORDS I FORBID IT.

Nyann: There blows that song, y'arr.

Iris: Thank you for reading and reviewing. Loki, however, is not based off of Marilyn Manson. He is based off of David Bowie's Early 70's glam rock persona Ziggy Stardust. His music saved my life and for two years _was_ my life. Please google/youtube Ziggy Stardust. It is very important to me that people understand where I am coming from and the esthetic I am emulating and utilizing. Just because something is shocking or outrageous or flamboyant does not make it retro glam rock. I am sorry for my 'kids these days' rant, but as someone who is a fifty year old man inside this shit is important to me. Also, Loki (especially from norse myth), Tom Hiddleston, RDJ, and David Bowie are like all of my favorite things, so this started out as kind of the worlds most self-congratulatory circle jerk and mutated into this thing that kind of involves a lot of stuff.

iwriteyourstory: Thank you very much! Considering that even I didn't think this was a good idea when I started you guys aren't the only ones I have to continue convincing. Haha.

Sphinx: Oh god, I know that feel. Sometimes I get really into a fic and am on like chapter 45 when I realize it hasn't been updated in three years. I try not to even touch WIP's. I promise I'll do my best not be that guy. If it helps, I pretty much update once every week at some point. I really wanted this to be as tactile a reading experience as possible, so thanks so much for pointing that out, hope you continue to enjoy!


	30. Chapter 30

If traveling with Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost has taught Tony anything, it's that once you've found the people hauling shoes, you've basically found Loki Lauff. The man has more pairs of shoes than half of the shoe stores in the country combined.

They are always easy to spot, as they complain the loudest. Tony helps a guy with a box, and the next thing he knows he's standing inside Loki's dressing room.

Loki's laying across an old wooden vanity, smoking a cigarette. He's still in his flannel and jeans, and the images refuse to coalesce in Tony's mind. Even dressed simply the man still has the mannerisms of a peacock.

"Well?" He asks blandly on an exhale of smoke. And Tony walks toward him. In stead of speaking he plucks the cigarette from Loki's mouth and takes a long drag. It's not finished, but Tony stubs it out on the vanity right next to Loki's hand, leaving a little burn mark.

"That's an antique van-" Loki begins but before he can finish Tony's got a finger under his chin and is tilting his whole head up and back. When he kisses Loki he devours him whole, and their dueling tongues send sparks of light and fire shooting through their limbs. Tony only breaks away when he feels his lungs burning, in desperate need of air. They break apart with a mutual gasp.

"I wish you hadn't-" He begins and Loki's entire body stiffens. Tony begins to card his fingers through his hair. "I wish you'd waited until the end for that song. What am I supposed to do for the next three hours?"

Loki's grin is wicked.

"Wait."

Tony wants to die.

"Can't handle three hours, baby?"

"Not after that, you asshole."

"That's not a very nice way of thanking the man whose bared his soul to you."

"After I get my private concert later I'll thank the living fuck out of you."

"You better."

Tony wants to kiss Loki more than he's ever wanted anything in his entire life, and when he looks at Loki's mouth he sees that there are suddenly no scars there at all. He is incredibly confused.

"It was a metaphor." Says Loki as he gestures toward the flesh toned bits of wax on the vanity. Tony doesn't get it, but he wants to. He needs to know what Loki meant.

Everything is artifice with Loki Lauff. Everything means something else. Everything is allusions and and smoke and paint.

"Either help me get ready or get out." Loki's manner has changed so quickly that Tony thinks he feels his neck snap. "I've got a show to do."

"All right your highness, cool it a second."

Tony unbutton's Loki's shirt, starting from the bottom, and when he reaches the very top button their eyes catch.

They remain in that dim room, hanging in the balance together for god knows how long.

The ensuing two hours will be humidity and wind and cloud cover and the first whispers of thunder over the water.

Tonight there's going to be hurricane.

* * *

Stormy: Thanks darling! It will actually be a song. I'm in the process of writing it. Eventually I'm gonna play it for y'all on guitar.

xD: Gracias!

Arbitrary: YAY. That makes me indescribably pleased!

Nyann: I plan on it man. Before I finish writing this fic I will have a song up. And considering it started out as plotless porn this got way heavy man. I mean, there's definitely sex eventually though.

FGS: Yes I did. I was in a classic rock revival band for two years so I can pop out lyrics like they are already written on the insides of my eyelids. You should be nicer to your soul man. I ply mine with weed and yoga and it kind of does things, I guess. I love you too, man.

spacey: SO ON IT.

hulky: Oh god, if you're crying now...

RANT: IT'S FINALS WEEK AND I HATE LIFE AND I HATE MYSELF AND I WROTE AN EIGHT PAGE PAPER AND PUT A PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE PORTFOLIO UP YESTERDAY, I ATE PASTA WITHOUT EVEN COOKING THE FUCKING SAUCE , I WENT TO BED AT 6 AM AND I WOKE UP AT ONE AND I'VE BEEN WEARING THE SAME CLOTHES FOR A WHILE AND NOW I GET TO GO TO STARBUCKS AND GET FOUR SHOTS OF ESPRESSO IN A CUP AND HAVE THEM JUDGE ME AND NO ME FUCKING GUSTA. NOPE. I HOPE YOU LIKE THIS CHAPTER I DON'T KNOW WHY I HAD TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW FFFFFUUUUUCCCCCK


	31. Chapter 31

As Tony watches Loki play he can tell that Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost won't be lasting for much longer.

In the spaces between songs and outrageous acts he can tell that Loki is bored. He wonders if the band will even last to end of the tour.

The audience can't tell, but Tony knows Loki. He can read the impatience in the twist of his lips and the unconscious rocking of his patent-leather-clad feet.

With that realization comes a thousand others.

When the tour ends, so do they?

Before that song Tony would have said yes, if he'd let himself think about anything other than Loki's milk-white skin, and gorgeous flashing eyes, and long slender hands-

Tony mentally slaps himself before he starts vomiting saccharine little pieces of his own restrung organs on his shoes.

Even though Tony can't imagine a world without Loki in it, logical reality dictates that Loki goes back to London and Tony goes back...

Back to what?

Loki's gone home and Tony's still running, the one friend he had lost chasing some kind of romantic, erotic, neurotic ghost in lipstick and five inch heels.

And fuck. He doesn't even know how to go about finding Pepper. He met her on the interstate in Alabama. She was hitching a ride to nowhere really, just the next place. God knows where she's even from. Or if she has a home at all. She tried to play it like she was world-wise and savvy on all accounts, but when it really came down to it the girl had no idea what she was doing.

He left her in L.A and he hasn't thought of her since.

Tony feels like a class A asshole.

His hands start to itch and without any drugs doing loops through his system he realizes that he hasn't built, designed, or worked on anything more complex than odd jobs and broken instruments in nearly a year.

The thought sends a stab of physical need through him. He'd been an inventor of sorts since he could walk, taking things apart and putting them back together. The mechanical world made sense in a way that nothing else did.

That might make him like his father, but that's also what makes him Tony Stark.

Building and discovering and learning and tinkering and designing is what Tony Stark does.

Living in a doped up fantasy land with a lunatic that fronts a glam rock band is not what Tony Stark does.

Or not what he can do forever, at any rate.

Whatever his father is or is not, he can give Tony back his infinite resources and three floors of R&D.

It's not even like Tony saw him that often to start with. The Stark men avoided each other like the plague, only coming close enough for physical violence when Tony's mother pushed them together.

It has been a year nearly since he spoke to either of his parents.

Tony doesn't really miss either of them.

There is one person he does miss, however.

After all, it isn't entirely true that Tony Stark raised himself.

"Darling?"

It's almost as if Tony's snapped from sleep into wakefulness. When he comes to he's standing in the middle of the empty theatre, the only thing connecting him to earth is a single hand on his shoulder.

"Are you all right?"

No, he really isn't. But when Tony turns around and sees Loki dressed in brown corduroy bell bottoms and a shirt with an outlandish but not particularly outlandish design, looking a bit like a four year old awaiting approval, it feels like cool water being applied to a burn.

"I don't know," Says Tony, but when he threads his fingers through Loki's he can't help but smile.

Loki begins to lead him out of the theatre.

"I've never done that before." Says Loki as they walk.

"Done what?"

"Just gotten up on stage and played a song. No theatrics. No posturing. Just sound. And myself. It's liberating."

"Really? Even when you were starting out?"

"I always had a costume on. You've seen me. I basically live in costume. I always thought that, my voice wasn't enough, so maybe if I put on enough eye shadow it would distract the masses from my foul warbling."

"Your voice is beautiful." Says Tony almost before Loki's finished and Loki's smile could light up a small city.

"Transcendent?" He asks through the smile and Tony has no idea in hell how he's supposed to leave now.

"Always." Tony means it and Loki looks like he wants to cry, but never would. He holds Tony's hand even tighter.

Fuck it.

If there's no place for Loki in Howard Stark's R&D candyland then there's no place for Tony either.

* * *

Nyann: Thanks! If everyone doesn't hate me and possibly murder me by the time this is done, I might dabble in the verse a bit.

Tina: I AM THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS PINEAPPLE, DEMIGOD OF JUXTAPOSITION AND SETTING THINGS ON FIRE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND WORDS. I ACCEPT THEM INSTEAD OF SCAFFOLDING GOATS. I ALSO ACCEPT MASTERCARD.

Stormy: Loooooooooooooooooooooookkkk kkkkkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Russ: I usually only write fic to play around with stuff like that before I put it in books or whatever, so thanks for letting me know when you dig.

hulky: You should seriously savour these moments of calm/love/lust because writing the end is literally killing me, that's how much it hurts. For the love of fuck, I can't even write too much of it at once without feeling physical pain. You can't even imagine what I've done. I think you will all rise up in a rage and guillotine my sadistic moffat-y ass.

I AM CELEBRATING THE END OF MY FINALS BY GIVING YOU ANOTHER CHAPTER YAY. I'M FRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEE.


	32. Chapter 32

When they are alone in their room they collide without words.

Tony leaps into Loki's arms and wraps his legs around his hips, effectively sending them both crashing against a wall. As they kiss, Loki pivots so Tony is caught, pinned bodily against the wall.

Tony feels Loki's hardness against his own and flushes, remembering it inside him.

"Oh baby, it's been awhile hasn't it?"

Whenever Loki starts talking to him in _that_ voice he swears his brain leaks out of his ears.

"You've probably tightened back up again. That means I'll have to go slow."

Loki grabs Tony's ass in both hands and shifts him so Tony can feel him rubbing against his hole through the layers of cloth. That little spot inside Tony seems to have a memory all it's own, because Tony swears he can feel it ache.

"But I don't want to go slow, baby. I want you _now_."

He continues to rub himself against Tony and Tony keens.

"Right against the wall, with gravity helping you bear down, so you can take every inch of me."

"Oh god." Says Tony, eloquently and suddenly his clothes are being pulled off piece by piece. Loki hardly even puts him down, just maneuvers his legs free of his shoes and pants. Tony watches in awe, marveling silently at Loki's strength as he finds himself right where he started.

Only this time there's an impossibly thick, long cock pressed between his ass cheeks, flush against his hole.

Then come the slick fingers. One by one by one. Tony knows what he can have. He knows how wonderful and hot and full he is about to become, and the promises whispered by those clever fingers are driving him to distraction.

"Darling, please!" Tony whines. "I'm ready! I'm-"

"Ssssh." Says Loki and Tony gasps as he feels the blunt end of that thick length press against him.

His eyes open wide and his mouth drops open as it starts to press inside, slick and hard and relentless.

The stretch is singular and the burn is incredible. It is not entirely comfortable, and tony finds himself still struggling not to yield to his bodily instinct, and push the thing out of him.

Tony's shaking when Loki kisses him, and his kiss is gentle and soothing and burns in an entirely different way. Tony feels lightheaded and lost. When Loki switches to biting and kissing his throat the sweet vertigo only intensifies.

"I've got you." Loki says and Tony believes him. He let's out a long, low cry as the rest of Loki's cock sinks into him.

"Talk." Says Tony through his heavy breaths.

Loki's panting like a dog.

"Hmmm?" He asks, and Tony can feel his thigh muscles shake, quaking with the desire to push and pull and thrust.

"Love your voice." Tony buries his fingers in the taller man's long dark hair. His voice sounds utterly broken. "Talk to me, please."

Loki smirks. "Anything for you, darling. I love it when you say please."

* * *

FGS: I am actually a class A bastard. I thought you already knew.

xD: Dat pretty. unf.

Loki'd: Yeah, I found it totally impossible as a writer to just have them live in a repercussion-less dream world forever. It just wouldn't make any sense.

Stormy: My Loki ain't like all the other Lokis I seen around. I made damn sure of that. My Loki is so human and and so inhuman at points that I honestly am not even sure what the fuck he's gonna do till I write it. Occasionally I finish a chapter and I just reread it and go 'What the fuck is this? How does he even do these things?' Loki's kind of running this bitch. That's why when people ask for specific things I just kind of shrug at them via internet. This train has totally jumped the tracks on me.

Nyann: I WRECKED THEM SONS A BITCHES. I FUCKING BLAZED IN WITH MY GUN FULL OF ROCK SALT AND FUCKING SENT THEM STRAIGHT BACK TO HELL.

H.: Thank you kindly!

Sen: Thanks man. It just so turns out, that what happened next was sex. Hooray! You win the smut pony!

Everybody: If you like my writing check out my novel blog. I'm writing a motherfucking original story. Awwwwyeah bitches. It's fucking crazy: The Seer's Game. Link is on my profile.

Post-story rant:I AM DYING. I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO SPEAK IN DAYS AND MY WHOLE BODY HURTS AND NOBODY BELIEVES I'M FUCKING DYING BECAUSE MY NORMAL TEMPERATURE IS OR OTHER SO WHEN I HAVE A NORMAL TEMPERATURE I ACTUALLY HAVE A FEVER. MY BAND WAS SUPPOSED TO GET BACK TOGETHER TOMORROW AND NOW WE CAN'T AND I AM FUCKING SAD AS BALLS.


	33. Chapter 33

"If I could, I would keep you just as you are, here by my side, past the end of all things."

...

...

"How does it feel to be owned so thoroughly, Anthony?"

...

...

"I imagine that it's liberating to know that you're mine."

This isn't what Tony meant. Tony has never been this hard and wanted to cry so much simultaneously. Or wanted to rip his hair out on top of it.

Loki is going _slow_.

"Lo-ki!"

"Am I driving you mad, darling?"

Loki shifts his cock inside him and brushes against his prostate. Tony thinks he may have gone blind.

"Last time you finished without me touching you at all. You came just from this!"

He stabs Tony's prostate again and again with rapid little shifts.

"Oh god!"

The slide of Loki's cock inside of him, even as it only moves halfway in and out, is enough to make Tony lose his mind entirely. He doesn't know what he's saying but Loki's loving it.

"Oh, the mouth on you, darling. Disgusting."

In between kisses that are more like bites and thrusts that are more like small rocking nudges Tony feels his orgasm to start to coil in his abdomen.

"Close!" He manages to cry out through a tiny gasp and Loki smirks as well he can around his own deep, uneven breaths.

"I know. Every muscle in your body's pulled tight, straining out of your skin; like a sculpture."

Tony can't breathe as Loki nudges his little bundle of nerves with slightly more force.

"I can see you inside that block of marble, and I'm going to carve you out."

Tony has no fucking idea what he's talking about.

"An effigy of a roman soldier, with a whore's mouth."

Hearing Loki say 'whore' is all it takes. Tony's orgasm wracks his body in lascivious ground-shaking spasms.

When Loki cums inside him it's almost like an afterthought. Tony swears that the warmth spreads throughout his entire body.

He groans, feeling hollow, when Loki pulls out.

Tony is awake but in a blissful state unlike wakefulness. He can hear Loki humming as he lightly scrubs what's left of himself away with a cool wash cloth.

"New song?" Tony asks and Loki doesn't answer. He only keeps humming.

* * *

Sorry I'm running a bit low on time so I can't reply to reviews but I want to thank you all for reading and reviewing! :)


	34. Chapter 34

When Tony wakes up Loki's gone, but there's a note on the pillow next to him. When he opens it 20's fall out and spill onto the electric green bedspread.

The note reads:

_Darling,_

_Couldn't sleep. Doing some shopping. I'll be around sooner or later. There's a party tonight. We've also got a late flight tonight off to the next gig. Someone probably knows when or where, so have a drink on me._

_-L_

Tony smiles as he looks at Loki's strangely stiff way of writing.

As he gets out of the bed he feels an almost pleasant full body twinge, reminding him of the night before, but nothing like after that first time. He wiggles his naked ass against the bedsheets as hard as he can, just to see.

This turns out to be an incredibly poor decision.

Tony takes a long, decadent shower. Loki and he had cleaned up minimally the night before, but Tony can still smell the other man on him.

He watches the water as it swirls down the drain, loath to let any pieces of Loki disappear.

He finds Loki's shirt from yesterday on the floor and puts it on, after finding his own pants. He decides to forgo shoes entirely. He's just going to the bar after all.

On his way out of the room he looks back at Loki's note, sitting by its lonesome in the center of the bed, and gently picks it up.

Tony gets halfway to the bar before he realizes that he left the money in their room. He shakes his head a little at himself, but with the mood he's in there isn't a single thing on earth that could bring him down.

With a grin on his face that could rival the brightness of a dying star Tony decides that he's going to have a martini for breakfast.

* * *

Yay! Christmas update! I hope you all have an awesome christmas!

This also came really really close to being the end of AoF, but it's not. We're at the halfway point now. Shit's about to get fucking intense.


	35. Chapter 35

Tony is getting better at this.

Despite the crippling depression of the inevitable crash, nothing makes a person want to get out of bed faster than being under at least three people.

He feels like he's being cooked alive and it takes all of his considerable tactical skill to maneuver himself out of the pile of limbs.

Tony ends up sprawled on the floor, naked. He looks up at a vaguely white ceiling blanketed in smoke and walls with rotten wallpaper virtually sweating off of them. His head's pounding and his stomach feels like it's been tortured.

The smell of weed is almost like an afterthought.

"Want some, babe?" Tony moves his head until his eyes finally hit the source of the smoke. Three guys and a chick are passing around a bowl made out of an apple. Someone's already taken a bite out of it.

Tony's never been big on saying no. He sits down in their circle and figures he'll head out whenever. At least some smoke will chill down the low enough for him to kind of want to exist again.

He takes a hit and lets it burn in his lungs.

And again.

And again.

The more you cough the higher you'll be and Tony nearly coughs up blood.

They are all talking around him but he can't really hear. Tony'd done lines the way bad kids write them after a few too many beers the night before, and it seems like even his bones are feeling mutinous.

"Where am I?" He asks some amount of time later and the conversation around him grinds to a halt.

"4th and Cedar." Someone says and Tony vaguely registers some people starting to get off of the bed.

"I mean what city?" Tony doesn't really know where he was before this, so how the fuck is he supposed to know where he is now?

"DC, Man!" Says someone.

"Home of the White house!" Says someone else.

"Casa-fucking-blanca!" Says someone else.

"Casa-fucking-nova!" Says someone else.

They are all laughing hysterically and Tony suddenly hates them all. He gets up more abruptly than any stoned person should, and falls into the lap of a blonde girl that smells like a living ashtray.

When she starts pulling on his cock Tony registers that he's suddenly ravenous.

"What's it like, being Loki's boy?" She asks and Tony wonders what exactly that has to do with the handy he's getting.

"All right." He says for no reason other than that the blood he'd usually reserve for vocabulary is doing the 200 meter to his prick.

The girl looks less than pleased.

"Suck me off and you'll get any five questions you want answered."

The girl hardly thinks and hardly blinks.

"If I help do I get five?" Someone who is either a strangely beautiful boy or a really flat chick asks and Tony doesn't really even answer before there are a pair of mouths dueling with his cock dripping between them.

Tony learns that there's nothing like being deep-throated while having your balls licked while someone holds the bowl for you.

It's kind of like floating in the ocean.

"Why pay for a piece when you can have apple-smoked mary?" Someone says.

"Mary a-la-mode!" Says another someone.

"Green apple crumble!" Says someone else.

Tony cums with a little grunt, straight down the throat of either the pretty boy or girl.

Tony watches them kiss with a vaguely disinterested sort of bodily numbness.

"How'd you meet?" Asks the girl.

"Called me backstage after a show. In L.A." Says Tony and the words feel like pudding in his mouth.

"How big is he?" Asks the boy and Tony laughs.

"Eight and a half fucking inches. Every time we fuck I feel like he's doing road work."

The boy gasps.

The girl blushes.

"Is he good to you?"

Tony isn't sure which one of them asked that and he honestly isn't sure of the answer either.

"Sometimes." He says and the girl frowns. "Now don't look at me like that, I'm not that good to him most of the time either. We're not good people."

"Loki Lauff is a genius!" The boy insists and Tony raises his hands in surrender.

"Whatever you say, darling."

Everyone in the room is glaring at him, and it doesn't take Tony long to figure out that he's no longer wanted. He grabs a pair of pants and shoes and a shirt that might be his before stumbling out of the shitty room into a shittier hall, and down a rickety still shittier couple flights of stairs into blindingly bright sunlight.

He has mastered the art of dressing while walking. He can hear them talk about what an asshole and how ungrateful he is and how Loki deserves better as he books it.

DC is warm and humid and a little aisle of gleaming stone and government in a sea of utter poverty and shit.

Tony can't really tell the difference between either of them. He vaguely stumbles toward the sound of civilization. He doesn't remember what hotel they're staying at, but he knows that Loki Lauff and the Age of Frost will be playing at the Martell Music Hall later.

Tony doesn't know when the gig starts or where that place is, but he figures that there will be flyers or something when he gets close enough to the shit that matters.

That's how he got along in those couple of stops in Texas? Tony isn't really sure, but it worked well enough.

* * *

Yay!New Years Eve Update! I wanted to do this before I get shit faced. Love y'all!

FGS: I didn't know that endings can be happy. I mean, that's a thing that happens? What!? You're kind of shattering my world view.

Stormy: Oh lord. Dude. Put your athame away. If you don't you are going to miss the utterly ridiculous second half of this.

Sora: Thanks so much! And I have an erotic and romantic relationship with cheeseburgers myself, so I couldn't not. And all things have to end man. It's the CCCCIIIIIRRRCCCLLLLEEE OFFFF LIIIIIIFFFFE.

Loki: Done!

Nev: I don't know if you'll ever actually see this, but I've been to a bunch of concerts and music festivals so I picked and chose. I've never had anything quite like that, but I've had my fair share of adventures. Haha.

Nyann: We've still got a good long while. There may or may not be a sequel!

Jen: Thanks so much! AND THERE ARE OTHER FICS THAT PORTRAY THIS SCENE!? WHERE ARE THEY. GIMME. I THOUGHT I WAS ALL ALONE. MUST READ.

Plastic Cello: Thanks man! AND THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING WHAT GLAM ROCK AND ZIGGY FUCKING STARDUST ARE I HAVE BEEN QUITE FRUSTRATED WITH PEOPLE BEING CONFUSED AS TO WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. LIKE BECAUSE I MENTION LEATHER ONCE I'M DOING FUCKING HAIR METAL OR SOMETHING. And a lot of people read the summary and think it's gonna be stupid because the idea's pretty far out, so they skip it. At least that's the impression I'm getting. I also get the impression that people are generally pleasantly surprised by how much it doesn't suck though, so I'm pretty happy. Impossible sounding AU's are what I do. I really want to do a Brideshead Revisited Destiel AU. I would squeal all over myself man.


	36. Chapter 36

A couple of hours, a dine and dash, three bummed cigarettes, and a five mile trek to the heart of DC later, Tony finds the Martell and stumbles around to the back, where he finds a brick wall and slumps against it, plopping firmly in a pile of cigarette butts.

He isn't high enough to stave off the pain of a body that hates what's being done to it.

He's nineteen and feels like he's eight hundred.

"Fuck me." He hears someone say and is delighted that it's the cynical british 'fuck me' of a man who knows he's in deep shit, rather than the leering 'fuck me' of an american man looking to stick his dick in something.

Tony's got rug burn in places he didn't know existed and he doesn't know how it got there. His knees look like ground meat.

He recognizes the voice too, which is helpful.

"Tony?" Peters sounds like someone's terrified mother. Tony can smell the cigarette he's smoking and blindly reaches out for either a drag or one of his own. He ends up with his had wrapped around the man's clean shaven calf.

"Get off, poofy git." Says the man affectionately and Tony feels a cigarette placed between his thumb and forefinger.

"Mate, where the fuck have you been?"

Tony shrugs and inhales. He looks up for the first time to see Peters standing in front of him dressed in something skin tight and purple. His arms are crossed.

"I'm honestly not even sure. I remember I was at that party Loki took me to. Next thing I knew I was piled into the back of a station wagon with a sack of coke the size of a small child, and there's a reason I've been called daddy. Then I was flying, man."

Tony starts coughing. It suddenly occurs to him that his throat is killing him.

"That's all you remember?"

Tony can see bits and pieces of it in flashes. He sees a redhead bouncing on his prick and its followed by a flash of two guys taking turns on his mouth and its followed by the taste of vodka and whiskey in one glass.

"More or less." He says and it seems that his throat suddenly hurts even more. He's fighting the urge to run screaming and scrub out his insides with turpentine.

"Loki is going to fucking kill you."

Suddenly Tony wonders how this didn't occur to him while he was wandering back to his master like a well-trained dog. Tony doesn't know what he looks like, but he knows it can't be pretty.

"You smell like a whorehouse and look like you've been mauled by a pack of bleeding vampires. These aren't even your fucking clothes. Tony, what are you doing?"

"Well mother, I'm just..."

Tony can't finish. Suddenly all he can taste is whiskey, vodka, and cock. His stomach churns unpleasantly twice before he's curled up on the ground, vomiting up the black coffee and waffles he'd inhaled before running out of the diner.

It's like acid eating away at his already sore throat.

He starts to cry. He feels truly disgusting.

"Oh fuck me!" Says Peters and Tony hears him disappear through the door his body convulses and he wretches. He feels like half of his back muscles have snapped.

Tony hears Loki before he sees him.

Even while cursing a blue streak his voice is distinctive. When the door slams open Tony moans. His temples start to throb.

When he's kicked onto his back and his stomach flips he lets out a cry. There is a lime green leather boot pressing into his chest with nearly enough force to crack his ribs. When Tony can open his eyes he looks up.

Loki looks like he could quite literally eat him alive.

"You gotta keep him on his side or he'll choke-"

"Kindly shut the fuck up Peters." Loki growls and Tony shivers despite himself. "Looks like that's all he's fucking good for, anyway. Either that or he stuck his whore mouth in a beehive."

Tony wants to die.

"Look, Loki, if you're done with him then let him go. Don't kill the kid."

Loki presses down harder and Tony wheezes. He doesn't know how much more his ribs can take.

"Done." Says Loki flatly and if Tony wasn't afraid of possible death before, he is now.

"Done?" Loki's teeth are grinding together and when he moves his foot Tony scurries away as best he can.

"_Done_!" When Loki screams Tony finds himself being kicked against the wall with such force that he actually can't see for a second. When he comes to he's throwing up again and Loki is looking at him like he's something awful that he's stepped in, which is actually the reality of it. When he takes a step closer Tony starts to physically shake. Loki's got his blood on his pumps.

The rock god kneels down. His skin is dusted with shimmering silver and black rings his eyes and fans out to sharp points. He's dressed in deep, dark green lace. When he opens his silver dusted lips to speak it comes out like a growl and the look in his eyes is terrifying.

"I am going to send you back to the hotel." He leans in closer and Tony wants to inch away, but he's caught between Loki and a brick wall. He begins in a low, soft whisper. "If you set even one fucking foot out of that room before I get back I will tear you apart with my bare fucking hands. Do you understand?"

Tony barely manages to nod.

* * *

FGS: Hahaha. I mean, my endings are either bittersweet or open ended or like horrible fucking tragedies. Like everything I write just gets so whacked out complex and out of hand that happy endings don't work. Sometimes I can't even technically end things and the story doesn't end but the telling stops. You don't even know how hard short prompt fills are for me. I want to make them all like 9000000000000 years long

Stormy: Bowie is pronounced Bow (like hawkeye) and eeeee (like a whole bunch of e's put together). Just so you know. Sometimes depending on the accident people call him Bough-ieee BUT THEY ARE WRONG.

Nev: Impending doom you say? You know me well...

Jen: YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE WOMAN. Thanks so much! My fleet of OTP's includes Destiel, Johnlock, Mormor, Frostpudding, Holmescest, Snape/Everyone, and Mystrade, but I've read everything from Pepperony to Batman/Robocop.

Plastic Cello: Thanks! And 70's rock is like all I do. Like I pretty much have the taste in music my dad has, haha. Like I'm a forty year old man inside, so when I ask hipster kids if they play any old school rock and they say 'I know some R.E.M' I have learned not to go all 'kids these days' on them. And I love R.E.M, don't get me wrong, but there was like fifty years or so of awesomeness happening before them. It's just David Bowie's music is like the most important thing to me in the world and he's saved my life so many times, so when people don't get it I just ASDFGHJKL PEASANTS. And ALSO, I am honestly on a mission to drown the internet in feels. I am glad it's working.

loria: YES. YES. YES. YES. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO NOTICE. YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSS SSSSSSSS. YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY FOREVER.

Starkid: Well, I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much just a stoner that drinks a lot of white russians and wine. So that's what I'm on, man. It sounds like you've got a case of the fic shakes, my friend.

Sen: Thanks so much, man. I honestly don't know what other AU's are like, since I rarely read them. I got pretty disillusioned with all of the fucking frostiron hipster coffee shop AU's in a hot minute. Until Destiel, I had never found a highschool/college AU I liked either. I found them all fucking unrealistic and ridiculous and Loki to generally be characterized as a thirteen year old girl in a twenty year old man's body. Literally, Highschool/College Destiel are pretty much the only hardcore entirely different universe AU's I read on the regular though. Dude, there is like an overabundance of brilliant destiel fic. Like I can't even fucking handle it. These people have had nearly a decade to craft fucking art and they have made some fucking art. Holy shit. Like I am actually afraid to post my own Destiel fic because I feel like there's no way it's half as good as what these people do.

Mama: Thanks so much! And dude, Velvet Goldmine is my life.


	37. Chapter 37

The looks Tony gets from George could freeze fire. He spends the car ride back to the hotel, which he learns is called The Blanchaient, trying to curl up into a small of a ball as possible in the back of the car.

An eternity of him wallowing in nauseous self-disgusted purgatory passes before the car comes to a stop.

"The room's 701. Get the hell out."

Tony stumbles out of the car on weak legs. The taste of stale vomit is making him gag and he thinks he's probably dehydrated. George throws the key at his back and bending down to pick it up takes him nearly five minutes. Once he's managed bending down he realizes that there are at least five room keys on the ground and they are all ungrabable.

Tony is used to disapproving looks.

The fact that everyone he passes in The Blanchaient is disgusted with him hardly registers. Tony is far more disgusted with himself than anyone could ever be.

He flops into the room without seeing it and crawls to the bathroom, where he proceeds to drown himself in the sink.

Tony looks at himself in the mirror for what feels like the first time in years.

He's dripping wet, his mouth and eyes are swollen beyond reason, and he's ringed in kiss shaped bruises. It looks more like he has some kind of disease than that he had a what? a sevensome? an orgy?

Tony throws off the clothes he was wearing and throws them all into the bathtub.

There's a box of matches and he lights one before throwing it on top of the foul-smelling pile of stained clothing.

He watches them burn and smoke and sizzle and blacken.

He is sorely tempted to throw himself on top of them.

It is a testament to both Tony's boredom and discomfort that an hour later he's cleaning the tub himself. He scrubs and scrubs it past clean, almost forgetting what he's doing entirely.

After his near death experience he's not crazy about bathtubs, but he takes the time to scrub himself raw. He brushes his teeth until his gums bleed. He watches his blood swirl around in the bathwater and disperse.

After his bath Tony crawls into bed. He can feel bruises blooming on his stomach from Loki's assault and he doesn't even want to look at them.

He's terrified of what Loki will do to him, but his body is physically incapable of caring. He's got nothing in him but a hangover, the remnants of a come-down, and bile.

He collapses on top of the duvet, limp and artlessly sprawled.

* * *

OH MY GOD IT IS DAVID BOWIE'S BIRTHDAY AND HE'S RELEASED A NEW SINGLE AND HAS AN ALBUM OUT IN MARCH I NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN WHILE I'M ALIVE I'VE BEEN CRYING ON AND OFF FOR LIKE 12 HOURS I'M SORRY I'M NOT REPLYING TO YOUR REVIEWS BUT I AM INCAPABLE OF ANYTHING YOU DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH THIS MEANS TO ME OR HOW EXCITED I AM THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY I JUST I JUST I LOVE HIM SO MUCH AND HE'S THE REASON I STARTED MY CLASSIC-ROCK-ESQUE BAND AND THE REASON I WROTE THIS FIC AND THE REASON I AM STILL ALIVE AND THE REASON I CAN ANYTHING AND MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE HAS JUST BECOME WORTHWHILE BECAUSE OF DAVID BOWIE AND WHAT IF HE GOES ON TOUR FOR THE NEXT DAY AND I CAN'T FUCKING DEAL WITH THIS FOR THE LOVE OF EVER-FUCKING FUCKERY.

WHEN I FOUND OUT I TOOK ALL MY CLOTHES OFF AND COVERED MYSELF IN TINSEL AND DUMPED A BOX OF UNCOOKED CRAFT MACARONI ON MY HEAD AND ROLLED AROUND ON THE FLOOR CRYING IT WAS ONE AM I AM JUST I FUCKING I JUST I CAN'T GO LISTEN TO IT AND BUY IT HE'S JUST LIKE AFTER TEN YEARS OF SILENCE FUCKING DOING IT AGAIN AND THIS IS EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WANTED EVER


	38. Chapter 38

Tony doesn't question much of anything until Loki's eyes pop out of his head and roll neatly into his outstretched palm.

They'd just been eating breakfast, or maybe they'd been laying together in a bed under a warm square of sunlight.

Maybe they'd been holding hands?

Tony doesn't know.

He does know however, that eyes don't do that.

There is a virtual river of water pouring out of his empty sockets, crystal clear and salty as the sea.

Tony's gagging on it. He wants to talk to Loki. He wants to ask him what's happening or ask him to stop, but this thing with Loki's face and legs and neck and long slender hands is void.

Water pours down it's front and and it's filling the negative space faster than Tony can blink.

It's so salty that it pricks at his ankles like a thousand tiny thorns.

This nagging itch quickly turns to agony as the water rises.

Tony offhandedly wonders if he'll be dissolved.

"Loki!" He tries but there is no response. The green eyes held like a pair of dice in his hands glint like precious stones. Tony reaches for them and falls into the water. He braces himself on his hands and screams as the water begins to peel away layers of his skin. His muscles shine like old scars as his skin is sloughed off and falls away, faster and faster.

"Loki!" He screams and through the agony there's suddenly a soft touch on his lower back. It pierces the agony and chases it away.

"What do you dream of?"

Asks a soft familiar voice and Tony latches onto it, looking idly around for the bits and pieces of him floating in the water. He wants to gather them all before he leaves but they are rushing away on the torrent.

"You call for me. What do you dream of?"

When he opens his eyes to a beige ceiling and a hand skating against his naked back soothingly Tony immediately relaxes.

"That was not a rhetorical question. Tell me."

When his vision clears and he looks up into Loki's unpainted, beautiful, placidly smiling face Tony thinks that this really isn't how Loki killing him for being a fucked up coked up slut is supposed to go.

"I was...all of my parts they were...split up into pieces. Just kept falling."

Tony does not expect Loki to pale past his usual nearly deathly complexion and hold him in a bone crushing embrace.

"What else?"

"Space was endless. There was nothing but it and you and me, and water kept getting higher and then falling. I could see parts of me falling."

Loki is kissing him. His hair and his ear and his face and his neck and his chest, right over every last kiss shaped bruise left from the night before.

"Was I falling too?" He finally asks and Tony takes a second to bask in the buzz his kisses leave under his skin before answering.

"You were the only thing still, in the whole universe."

Tony feels something wet on the back of his neck and on his shoulder and the means that Loki must be crying.

Tony can't even imagine that.

"It's so boring when you're not there." Tony feels the hand with long plastic black claws crawl over his shoulder and dip briefly in the hollow made by his collar bones, like there's water there.

"What's boring?" He asks.

"Everything."

That hand is stretched across the center of his chest and Tony feels like a doll. That hand dwarfs him. How large and long Loki is momentarily floors Tony as those fingers start to tap an unknown rhythm into his flesh.

Suddenly a sharp feeling of cold blooms between Loki's hand and his chest.

Tony gasps.

"Can you feel that?"

"Yeah."

The lay in silence, both partaking in the centralized chill.

"Loki, what is that?"

"You mean, you don't know?"

"You're the one with an icicle for a hand, man! How am I supposed to know why you're suddenly coming in at thirty two degrees below zero?"

Loki moves his hand to touch Tony's face and it's burning hot. The cold still swirls on his skin, right over his heart.

"That's you, Tony."

Tony places his hand over the cold spot, and presses his palm into the knocking of his rapidly beating heart.

As fast as the cold comes it goes.

Tony turns his face against Loki's warm palm, nuzzling the skin and hiding his eyes.

"I knew there was a reason." Says Loki and for the first time Tony wishes that he'd stop talking. He nuzzles his palm. Unfortunately, Loki does not require his input to continue. Loki voices whatever thoughts he wants to whenever he wants to; no more and no less.

"I knew that there was a reason I noticed you, that night in LA."

Whatever is spinning behind Loki's eyes is vast and immense and terrifying and Tony wants to run from it.

"It's cuz I'm so gosh darn pretty." He says and Loki shakes his head with a fond smile before getting out of the bed. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to write a song. You're going back to sleep."

"But Lok-"

"If you do not get enough rest you'll be tetchy and I don't want to deal with that. Sleep."

"But-"

"And in the morning you're going to eat properly. And if I catch you in bed with any white powders you'll be very sorry, indeed."

"But mom-"

"Don't try my patience, Anthony."

As Loki essentially tucks him into bed Tony wonders if anyone else on planet earth has mood swings that turn them motherly.

The kiss Loki gives him is anything but motherly and Tony is halfway to insinuating his tongue between those dexterous lips when Loki pulls away.

His cheeks are flushed and his eyes burn liquid green and suddenly Tony can't breathe.

"Sleep." Says Loki and slips into the bathroom. Tony is too busy drifting back into unconsciousness to realize that Loki's left his Wendy in her case, by the door.

Loki does not write without his guitar.

* * *

FGS: STILL NOT OVER IT. ASDS;DKFJA;SLDKJF;ASLDKJFA;SLDFKJ;ASLDF

hulk: do not touch one hair on David Bowie's precious head ever. EVER. It won't change the fact that I suck, haha.

stormy: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I WOULD DIE EVERYWHERE. BOWIE. ON STAGE. IN THE SAME PLACE THAT I AM. I WOULD DIE.

Mama: A glorious day has dawned indeed. And I can dig it. I'm not even a mom and I always want to hug all of my favorite characters. Especially them bastards with the puppy eyes. Ugh.

Nev: dundun dundun dundundundundundundundun

Loki: Oh, it goes.

Sab: I do have plans, and those may or may not be in them. ;)

jen: haha. i can't help it. once i sang this cover of Heroes for youtube and in the intro i just look so smitten that it's ridiculous. Booowwwiiiieeeee

Impatient: I am both flattered and very sorry. I feel like even I got away from myself as of late.

Sorry guys. After the return of the The Thin White Duke a lot of shit happened. I started writing a novel, my band got back together, and I DISCOVERED A MAGICAL WORLD OF NOVEL LENGTH AU DESTIEL FIC! I AM TRAINING TO ADD TO THAT NUMBER. So, hoped you liked this and stuff. Plz don't hate me.


	39. Chapter 39

Tony wakes up to the scent of bacon and eggs and sausage.

When the smell hits his tongue he feels his salivary glands start to weep with joy.

When that scent hits his stomach it curls into a little fist and he groans in pain.

"How long has it been since you've eaten?"

Tony opens his eyes and sees Loki sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him with a silver tray of food in his lap and a glass of milk resting against his thigh.

He's wrapped in a purple Kimono that gapes open at his collar bones and folds under the tray. The way light filters in through the mostly drawn blinds causes shadow to pool in the hollows of his collar bones and his long dark hair to gleam and-

"Will you ever stop gawking?"

Tony suddenly registers that his mouth is awkwardly hanging open and he closes it.

"You always look at me like you've never seen me before."

Between two people with too much shame to ever be bashful Freudian slips are different and more intimate.

Tony blushes hot and Loki's sarcasm evaporates in the air.

"Eat your eggs." He says softly and offhandedly stabs a bit of yellow fluff with a fork before sliding it between Tony's lips.

When their eyes meet it's by accident and neither say anything until half of the portion of eggs are gone and Tony feels like his stomach is about to explode.

He picks up a spoon and carves the end of a sausage link off before holding it out to Loki. Loki looks at the unfortunately mangled bit of sausage like it's a UFO dragging a banner behind it insulting his mother.

"This is called a sausage." Says Tony slowly, in the manner of a kindergarten teacher. "It's food. You eat it."

Loki looks entirely unimpressed and Tony laughs.

"For me? Just a little?"

Loki somehow manages to look even less impressed without moving a single muscle.

"You're not the only one that worries."

Tony knows he's won when something in Loki's eyes softens. He watches as Loki bites the piece of sausage off of the fork without letting his lips touch it.

"Atta boy!" Says Tony with an absolute overload of painfully bright enthusiasm and Loki flicks his ear.

Tony watches as Loki chews on it slowly, as if pondering the heady and complex flavors of the bite of cheap, F-grade, hotel breakfast sausage. Tony swears it takes him ten years to swallow. He watches the muscles in his jaw and neck shift beneath the skin.

"Now I know why you're so skinny. It probably takes you a hundred years to eat a sandwich."

Tony is about to start laughing at his own joke when Loki picks up the glass of milk and guzzles half of it in the time it takes Tony to blink.

He almost imagines he can see it sliding down into Loki's gullet as he drains half of the glass dry. His neck seems miles long.

Tony groans.

"Really, Tony?" Loki takes the glass and the tray and puts them on the nightstand. "_Children_ drink milk. How _perverse_."

The way Loki says 'perverse' it rings more like 'Bang on fucking job that one deserves a star'.

"Have you met me?" Asks Tony and when Loki takes his hand and slides it up his chest, so it grazes both the silk and his skin, Tony glides so their joined hands are entwined in Loki's long dark hair. "I'm _disturbed_."

"I hadn't noticed."

When Tony pulls Loki down by his hair and angles him for a kiss Loki lets him, and their lips meet with a languid, sharp sort of clarity.

They lay side by side, lost in a gentle push and pull, hands wandering in the lazy doldrums between passion and saccharine softness. Hands wander without direction, idly feeling everything but mapping nothing and naked ankles and feet tease as they hook about each other and break apart only to come together again.

Tony feels the low beginnings of a simmering arousal, the kind he's never felt before, start to curl in his gut.

It is not blinding and all-encompassing but another thing he feels in the context of soft hair, a gentle mouth, and miles of warm skin.

Loki really only smells like sweat and skin and a mediocre breakfast, and somehow the bone-melting comfort of it all makes Tony want to weep.

The moment shatters into a thousand pieces when something in the bathroom crashes onto the floor.

"Fuck!" Cries Loki and before Tony can breathe he's disappeared into the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

When Tony climbs out of the bed to follow him he's stopped in his tracks.

"Don't!" Loki calls from the bathroom. "Leave for the day! I've got to write!"

Tony wants to ask.

But at the same time he doesn't.

He puts on a pair of maroon corduroy bellbottoms and a purple shirt with a collar sharp enough to kill an unsuspecting dumbass before quietly tiptoeing out of the suddenly cold and empty hotel room.

* * *

Nyann: DON'T BE CONFUSED. I BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE SCENTED THE SWEET SCENT OF PLOT.

Nev: Because this shit heavy as balls. It's like fraught with ups and downs and an airport of emotional baggage.

Plastic Cello: I checked out yo shit. I looked at the first few chapters. I liked it, and I honestly don't even read that much Frostiron fic anymore, as I have fallen in mad passionate love with Destiel. I believe I have drafted you as a lieutenant in my retro army, though. Jussayin.

Loki: Gracias.

Jen: Oh dude, I know the feel of the triad of OTP's. Holmes/Watson in any incarnation, Destiel, and Propera/Ariel from the recent version of the Tempest just like fill my holy triad of OTP's with feels. ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. And maybe it's all just a dream within a dream within Dicaprisun's empty oscar shelf within a dream. It's where Dicaprisun would put an oscar...IF HE HAD ONE.

Stormy: What didn't just happen?

Dragon: Coke-induced nightmares are a bitch dude.

Chibi: I am not the marrying kind. I want to ride through the glen with my hair flowing in the wind, shooting arrows off into the sunset, but I am flattered sir and/or madam. And like I want to engage in conversation with the people who read my things. It is what best pleases me and I find best pleases everybody. I am always mad intimidated by like everyone all the time, and if I can not add to the general intimidation felt by the people such as myself on the intertubes I will gladly ramble at you POOR FOOLS.

OMG PLEASE DO A FANVIDEO THOUGH ANYWAY OH MY GOD THAT WOULD COMPLETE ME AS A WRITER OF FIC AND A HUMAN BEING AND LIKE I WANT TO BE THE BACON IN THIS MAD EKPHRASTIC ORGY OF FANDOM POR FAVOR OH MY GOD I WOULD DIE ALL OVER MYSELF I FUCKING CAN'T OK. SOME FLY ASS MOTHERFUCKER MADE QUALITY FAN ART AND I CRIED. LERHFOQIWREHF[QOWIRHQOIRHFOQIRHFOEF


	40. Chapter 40

Tony's heart feels eight sizes too big for his chest.

The sudden feeling of complete home while wrapped in Loki's arms and subsequent feeling of abrupt and horrifying loneliness have left him aching and exhausted.

As he slides dejectedly down the facade of the hotel room door and settles in front of it with his head buried in his knees he doesn't think about how much he resembles an unwanted dog.

He knows that Loki isn't actually writing and that whatever he's doing he doesn't want him to see.

He remembers what Peter's said about magic and takes time to mentally slap himself.

Loki may be enigmatic and beautiful and brilliant and mysterious and strange and-

"Fuck you, Tony." He says to himself and the empty hallway. "Loki Lauff is not some kind of enchanter. He's just a guy."

Tony knows that that's not right either.

There is the Loki who tucks him into bed and makes him eat and sleep.

There is the Loki who strangles him and kicks him and threatens him.

There is the Loki whose answer to every problem is a pill and a stiff drink or seven.

There is the Loki who wants to talk about his dreams.

There is the Loki who saws instruments in half when he isn't there, because everything is boring without him, with the apparent exception of acts of random destruction.

There is the Loki who knows everything about him.

There is the Loki who tells him nothing about himself.

There is the Loki who touches every inch of his skin with the reverent tenderness of a worshipper.

There is the Loki who is lying to him. Right now. At this very second.

Tony wonders if he's actually involved with fifty different people, all who want and need a thousand different things from him: each.

Tony's head hurts and he doesn't know what it says about him that the small breakfast Loki'd hand-fed him is making him feel nauseatingly full.

Footsteps approach and Tony wishes he could muster up the dignity to make it look like he isn't hopelessly loitering outside Loki's room waiting for his next scraps of attention and affection.

When the footsteps turn into Jonce, Lee, and Peters Tony really wishes he'd been able to muster up a bit of dignity.

"What are you doing out here?" Asks Peters and Tony can almost feel the sympathy rolling off of the rest of The Age of Frost in waves.

"Git's hiding a bengal tiger in the bathroom. Asked me to give them a moment alone."

Jonce and Lee roll their eyes. Peters pales.

"Let's get you some shoes and go out for a drive."

"Drive where?" Asks Jonce and Peters hauls Tony up by his arms and starts speed-walking him down he hall.

"Where do we ever drive?" Asks Lee and Jonce smiles.

"Around!" The three of them say together and Tony knows there's some kind of inside joke there. He can almost taste it in their identical grins.

How alone he really is, suddenly hits him in the gut like a javelin.

Tony hates this.

* * *

sorry guys, but I've been really sick and I'm about to get some energy work and acupuncture before my gig tonight, so I can't reply to everyone like I usually do, but I did want to give you a chapter, because it's been a little bit, and I do love you guys. Your enthusiastic response to this bit of nonsense really warms my cockles.


	41. Chapter 41

Jonce is 5'7 and must weigh 100 pounds. He's nearly thirty and looks like he's fourteen and his hair is pale gold and poker straight. Tony wonders how he ended up in possibly the gayest scene to hit humanity since the Ancient Greeks, when he can connect any topic to pussy in a second flat.

Occasionally he varies and directs the conversation back to tits.

But he's a good guy and a pretty salt-of-the-earth kind of guy whose got nothing against anyone and Tony likes him.

In every group of friends there's a Lee. He doesn't say much. They call him Gandalf so often that Tony forgets what his real name is halfway through the night. He also looks like someone with a hammer for a hand punched him the nose a few too many times. He's got hair dyed redder than an apple and eyebrows darker than ink.

They've been sitting in a random bar taking turns buying pints since the afternoon, well everyone has but Tony. They all buy for him.

By sundown Tony feels like they've all been friends for years.

"Mate, I'm just saying, if you see Drina Margoliese, you'll fucking die, mate. She's got tits like...like..." Jonce doesn't even finish, but its Jonce and they're drunk and everything is perfect.

Somewhere around midnight that all goes to absolute shit.

"Man, Tony," begins Jonce and everyone's awaiting something sexual and ridiculous but he's drunk enough to either be close enough to himself or far away enough to veer sharply past expectations and dead into oncoming traffic. "What are you even doing with Loki, man?"

Tony swears a cold wind blows through the room.

"You know, when Peters wanted to bring you along I was dead against because I couldn't imagine anybody who could spend that much time with Loki wouldn't be three parts git and one part the bloody fucking devil, but, mate, I like you all right."

It doesn't take a genius to see why Loki and Jonce don't get along and Tony is momentarily flabbergasted that the two could manage to be in the same room without bloodshed.

"You know, for a spangling woofter." Finishes Jonce with a disgusting belch and Tony can't help but grin.

"Fuck your mother, Jonce." Says Tony and even Jonce toasts to that. The atmosphere is bright until Peters goes to take a leak and Jonce jumps on the opportunity to grill Tony. It becomes obvious that he's been waiting for it all night.

"No, but really Tony? I mean, you know the life of a musician, though. I probably have illegitimate children in five countries. That's just how it goes. I figured Loki would have had six of you by now. He's got a _fetish_, mate."

"Fetish?"

"I've got a theory that he's one of them escaped Nazi experiments from the forties or what. Like an island of them! An Aryan Island."

"Loki's from Aryan Island." Tony wants to laugh, but he also doesn't want Jonce to punch him.

"It's the only explanation. He practically keeps you olive boys in a box in his closet. When we was in Spain he probably shagged every Moore in the world and it's because, you know, there'd only be porcelain-y bastards, like Loki, on Aryan Island. He's like angry at blonde people. He's probably sick of seeing 'em."

While Tony really doesn't like the idea of being another in a series, he recognizes that most people aren't like him. His type is apparently 'people'. He can't really fault other people for being a little bit more specific. He's also still stuck on the idea that:

"Loki's from Aryan Island." He says again and takes a drink to stop himself from cackling hysterically.

"That's not the point!" Jonce looks serious and Tony desperately doesn't want this to be one of those conversations. "Loki's an arse. I only joined this up here in the first place because if I had to play somebody else's music for them in studio with no fucking credit for the rest of my life I would have snapped, man. In fuckin' half."

Tony looks down at him empty mug and wants to cry. What is he supposed to do with his hands now?

"And look, if we're talking mad Loki's the king and his horse. Once he and me had this big row and he told me that he was actually Loki and I should do whatever for him, on account of him being a fuckin' god! Then he went on some rant about all the people he killed for a lark! They tried to tell me it was just the oats talking but I know what I'm talking about. The man is a mass murderer from Aryan Island."

Tony doesn't even know what to say. Jonce stands up and waves his arms. He sloshes a river of beer onto the floor and table before throwing his head back and bellowing:

"I am Loki! Liesmith! Skyswinger or what! Kneel before me peasants!"

It is a role that Tony isn't used to, but he finds himself maneuvering Jonce back into his seat and coaxing him to be quiet. It takes nearly five minutes and Tony wonders if he's that obnoxious when he's drunk.

"Look Tony, whatever you could do is better than that. He'll probably end up killing you. After this tour I'm done. I don't even want to be in the same city that berk's in. He's nine kinds of wrong. I just want you to know, because I like you."

Tony desperately wants to be angry. He wants to tell Jonce to shove it and that he's wrong, and that he and Loki are in love and that's all that matters.

"I know," Tony says instead, with someone else's smile. "But I'm not really jonesing after old age anyway."

"Stop being a fucking idiot."

Tony can definitely see why Loki and Jonce don't get along. He's still trying to find the anger he knows he should have when Jonce interrupts his soul quest.

"You're fifteen years old. What the fuck do you know about living or dying? Go back home. Or, if you want to play music, give me a call. Any fucking time. I'll give you a new fucking home."

"I'm nineteen!"

"If you're nineteen than I'm a fucking horse. What do you weigh, ninety pounds?"

"I'm not a fucking child!" And suddenly Tony feels like he could strangle the man blind.

"Oh yeah? Then why are you acting like one? What do you think you're proving? Running around in heels sucking the cock of the bastard who kicks you in the stomach in public? Proving what a man you are, are you?"

Before Tony knows what's happening he's laying under Jonce and he hears more than feels bits of his face snap and crack and gush with blood as he's beaten into the floor.

All it takes is a knee pressed against his stomach the wrong way and he's vomiting.

He doesn't even consider fighting back.

Halfway through a mouthful of blood and regurgitated beer and bile Tony lets out a final cry and loses consciousness.

* * *

Guest: Thank you kindly!

FGS: Thank you man. I was really dizzy the entire time but our gig was awesome and we possibly have two more lined up and I might study in London this summer so I can push my band's cd on a whole new country and eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Stormy: Yeah, I kinda wanted to set up this thing where like you kind of only experience the world as Tony does so when there was nothing else in his world but Loki you didn't really get anything else either.

Loki88: I just want my Loki to be impossible to predict and interpret but kind of easy to understand. I don't know what that means. Ignore me. Thank you for reading.

mama: Yeah man. Kicked puppy isn't a good look an anyone. I have worn it more often than not. ugh.

Emily: Thanks man! I actually have this done aside from editing. It takes me longer to edit things than to actually write them sometimes. There might even be a sequel to this. Literally there are so many places that I could go with this. I could make like an Avengers/Supernatural or Avengers/Sherlock xover sequel if I wanted and it would actually make perfect sense. I am the craziest fuck. Once I dreamed an entire original season of Doctor Who in my sleep and thought I was actually in my old living room watching it on tv. I don't even know what happens in my head man.

Kaja: WHAT LINE DO YOU HAVE TATTOOED ON YOUR WRIST TELL ME I HAVE TO KNOW AGGGHHHHH. I have a massive Thin White Duke portrait planned for when I can afford it. And I don't blame the young uns. I'm just a fifty year old man inside. My friends took me to a vegan kosher chinese restaurant over the weekend and I was secretly sad inside that there were no cheeseburgers the whole time and all these trendy people were just like 'my stomach will not be the womb of an animal' and I was like dreaming of meat and cheese and bacon. But anyway DO YOU HAVE A TUMBLR? WE SHOULD JOIN IN MUTUAL SQUEE.

Happy Valentine's Day guys. My Valentine's Day comes in the spring, but I hope you all enjoy your company engineered one. I don't know why I do holiday updates because this story is kind of not that jolly, but fuck it. I love you people.


	42. Chapter 42

There is a specific sort of discomfort to being in a hospital bed. It is so specific that Tony doesn't even have to open his eyes. He's surrounded by cheap cotton and cheap springs and the too-sterile air is making his skin crawl.

He hardly even wants to open his eyes

When he cracks open his eyelids its just enough to make out a bleary humanoid shape in the corner, as he knows he's going to have to face the blinding white in stages.

"Loki?" He croaks and automatically reaches out the hand with the IV in it. Tony has to force himself not to pull against what feels like a shackle, and rip his vein to shreds.

"No, Tony." Says a deeper, and altogether more tired and disappointed voice. Tony knows that voice. It doctored, nurtured, and guided him on his father's behalf for eighteen years. Howard was absent, and his mother only had eyes for Howard, and nannies came and went, but Obadiah Stane was the closest thing to 'being there' that Tony had ever had, before Pepper.

Tony had planned on never seeing either of his parents again, but Obie was more collateral damage on that front.

Tony'd figured that he'd see him again at some point.

He hadn't wanted it to be like this.

"Your..._friend_ is on his way to Texas."

"No!" Cries Tony before he can bite it back. He's shaking.

"Tony, Loki Lauff is a musician under contract to complete a tour. That is what he's here for-"

"Loki wouldn't-"

"Tony, listen-"

"He wouldn't just leave-"

"He is contractually obligated to-"

"Shut the fuck up Obadiah!"

Tony still can't really see, and the tears he can't hold back any longer aren't helping matters. The room is swimming but he'd know that voice anywhere.

"Obie, you have to listen to me! You don't know Loki like I-"

"I get it, Tony. I really do. You're young. Your father pissed you off. He made you feel unappreciated, so you figured you'd make him sorry. I love Howard more than any of his various..._ladyfriends _probably ever will, but even I can admit he can be an asshole when he puts his mind to it. There's also some good-"

"No. There really isn't."

"The man's a genius-"

"And what good is that if he treats everyone around him like a piece of furniture in his own personal fucking funeral home!?"

Obadiah's silence is like a physical slap across the face.

"Look, I know that what I did was shitty and-"

"It's been forgotten."

"Obie, there's no way that everyone-"

"Everyone does stupid things when they're a kid, Tony. That's what youth is for!"

"Youth is about scraping your knees and falling in and out of love every week. It's got nothing to do with..."

"With what, Tony?"

Tony's got a million nouns swimming through his head and he doesn't want to pin a voice on any of them. He'd literally done every shitty thing he could possibly think of in the years leading up to his excommunication from the Technological Church of his holiness Howard Stark.

"He disowned me. Told me if I so much as set foot on company grounds ever again he'd have me shot. Haven't heard from him since. Haven't heard from you either, Obie."

That fact is what hurts most of all.

"I've slept in cellars and cars and mansions and homeless shelters, I've been in an out of jail cells and whorehouses and cities and states and gig after gig after gig. I've been hurt and sick and nearly dead and I heard nothing from any of you fucking people. For over a year."

This time Obadiah's silence feels like a personal victory.

"What's changed, Obie?"

When Obadiah throws a manilla folder onto Tony's lap Tony doesn't even have to open it to know what's in it.

Tony does it anyway.

The person in those pictures is not him.

Wanton and waspish and androgynous, a starving boygirl attached to the hip of an alien predator in lipstick with a handful of thick black claws.

Kissing, touching, stroking, strung out, oblivious.

_Transcendent_.

Photograph after photograph after photograph.

"It's becoming almost impossible to hide." Says Obadiah and Tony doesn't understand.

"HIde?"

"I didn't think you were this naive."

Tony's got a photo in his hands of him and Loki, holding hands in some hotel or other.

He can suddenly hear Peters in his head.

_Loki looks at you like you're the only thing that matters.._

Tony can see it in Loki's face and it makes his heart physically twinge.

"Stop that!" The picture is snatched out of Tony's hands before he can blink and he feels like a piece of him has been taken away. "Our people are good, but not that good! You've been recognized and you are one minor mistake away from being a goddamn laughingstock! We miss one single picture and you can't show your face in public! One fucking slip up, Tony Stark, and you won't ever be able to come home!"

There are pictures of him and Loki all over the floor and Tony feels like Obadiah has singlehandedly debased something sacred and profound

"I didn't know that coming home was an option."

"Look, you wanted your father's attention, and you have it Tony. You've got what you wanted right in the palm of your hand. You've succeeded. You don't have to do this anymore. You are so young and such a brilliant brilliant mind, Tony. Don't waste it over some faggot that whores you out and jitterbugs off the second it's time for him to bat his eyelashes in the direction of a new crowd of faggots."

Tony feels the tears dripping down his chin before he can stop himself and in that moment he hates himself more than he ever has.

"I know that Howard isn't perfect. I will be the first person to admit it. I'm not going to look you in the eye and insult your intelligence by promising you that if you come back the Stark family is going to become the Brady Bunch. But, after what you did, he's willing to let you back into any one of his houses, and take care of you, and leave you his legacy."

Tony hasn't built, designed, or fixed anything beyond the completely mundane in eons. He hasn't been in the proper circles. A robot that does your laundry, jerks you off, and can predict the stock market with damn near perfect accuracy might have been invented in his absence and the circuitry of it might be a complete fucking mystery to Tony Stark, previous technological boy wonder, current coked-up wind-up toy of London's most notorious rock-n-roll prostitute.

"And you and I both know that that's more than you deserve, Tony."

Tony knows that this is true.

"You humiliated him, your mother, and yourself. Then after you left you pursued this particular course with a vengeance. If I were you I'd crawl back to him on your hands and knees and accept whatever abuse he wants to give you."

Tony knows that this is true also.

"You've fucked up Tony Stark."

Tony's got a brick in his throat and a turbulent ocean of bile and anger and despair churning in his gut.

"I'll be back for you in the morning. I'll help you fix this. Like I've always done."

When Obadiah leaves Tony's got nothing to say. He shakes and he sobs and he shakes, alone in the dark, straight into unconsciousness.

* * *

FGS: Thank you man. And I'm really hoping I can. My dad just lost his house and he and my sister were basically homeless and cashing in on favors for a month, so now that my sister is in a legit place I don't feel that bad about fucking off for a month. I also hope that all the scholarship places feel bad enough for me to help a brother out, you know man. I mean also, rock & roll is my literal life. Like I write this shit, I play in the only band of people I have met under fifty that play Led Zeppelin for fun. Like fuck. If there is anyone that should go on a music based program to the place where everything I love came from, it's me. For the love of fuck.

Stormy: Your reviews always make me so happy.

Loki88: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHA

Kaja: I can dig that, and that is a killer tattoo. I'm jelly. And yeah man. I was actually writing novels before I did fic, so like I am probably better at creating characters than taking other people's and beating them into submission. I am actually writing a novel right now that I'm gonna self publish. Right now it's called 'If Stephanie Meyer Can Be That Self-indugleant and Make Ten Million Dollars Than I Can Too, Fuck All Y'all' but I probably need a better title before I do that haha.

Jenamy: Dude, Tommy Chong is like one of my spirit animals. You probably couldn't tell, but weed is pretty much 70% of what I do. Like The other thirty is wine, beer, writing, music, and dying my hair unnatural colors. And hey man, I kind of hate to tell you this, but shit isn't even as bad as it's gonna get. Like holy shit. Torturing characters is kind of the crust on that pie chart which is my life. If you're feeling down and think that Tony should get away from Loki I am doing it right and you are getting it right. Like shipping isn't shipping unless your ship is so destructive to one or both people that you feel bad about it. What are fluff ships? What is happiness? Fuck man, I don't even know anymore.


	43. Chapter 43

Tony is coaxed from a sleep by the feeling of soft familiar fingers tracing invisible lines down his cheeks.

Before thought can intervene he turns his face and presses his lips to them and the fingers cease in their movements, as if kissing him back.

"You've been crying." Says Loki and Tony feels as if his heart might burst. "Did you miss me?"

Before Tony can stop himself he's nodding and Loki's small gasp hits him like a hailstorm.

"Budge over."

Tony does and he's wrapped in warm arms and tucked against a strong chest and suddenly feels both like himself and utterly unlike anything he thought he would ever be.

"How did you even get in here?"

"I am infinitely resourceful."

It doesn't take Tony long to feel that Loki's wearing a set of simple cotton scrubs, like a surgeon would wear. Even as he wonders what kind of maniac he's dealing with, he can't help but smile.

"I thought you were in Texas."

"And I once thought the universe revolved solely around a far-flung star. Sometimes we all need to reevaluate our perceptions."

Tony doesn't know what to say to that, so he says nothing at all. Instead he begins to kiss those beautiful long-fingered hands from wrist to finger-tip.

Loki lets out a contented sigh.

"Is that what that man told you? Mr. Paparazzi?"

"Hmm?" Tony intones between kisses.

"He told you that I'd gone and left you on your own, so that all you really had left was to sell your story, cut your losses, and run?"

Tony takes one of Loki's fingers between his lips and sucks it down to the knuckle.

Loki slaps him lightly on the thigh with his unoccupied hand.

"Don't think for a moment that you can distract me, Anthony."

Tony worries at the paper thin stretch of skin between Loki's thumb and finger and feels his cock twitch against him.

"You're just making me suspicious."

"That's not all I'm making you."

"Anthony-"

"Loki-"

"Your blatant attempts at obfuscation-"

"You wound me."

"You will tell me-"

"I thought you were gone."

Loki says nothing.

"I thought that this was it."

Loki holds him a fraction of an inch tighter and every ounce of tension in Tony's limbs uncurls even as his stomach roils and clenches with feeling.

"I thought that you got what you wanted and booked it, Loki. I thought I'd never fucking see you again. So if I want to touch now and talk later you better fucking shut up and put your hands out because everyone and their mother fucking knows that it's only a matter of time before you got whatever esoteric fucking thing you wanted from me and the first place and disappear-"

"No." Says Loki. His eyes are burning and Tony is terrified.

"_No_." He growls and Tony wants to run.

Loki is unreasonable. Loki is unstable. Loki is violent. Loki is dangerous.

And he is kissing Tony like he can coax whatever esoteric fucking thing he wants and desires and _needs _out into the open and snatch it away with his clever tongue.

"If I stay, you stay." He finally says. He's cradling Tony's face in his hands and speaking against his lips and the boy shivers. "If I go, you go." He digs his nails into Tony's scalp and Tony groans. "And if I disappear it will only be because you are by my side."

In the dark and the silence they breathe together and warm brown eyes meet unearthly grey.

"Do you understand?"

The word yes forms a ball in Tony's throat that he cannot force past his lips. He nods. and Loki places his long fingers around his neck, stroking his jaw and cheekbones and ears before moving down again.

"That is not good enough, Anthony."

When Tony whispers 'yes' it sounds like he's been chain smoking for fifty years and tears start to fall before he can stop them.

Loki catches his tears on his fingertips and presses them between their lips as they kiss.

When they break apart Tony registers that he's being held in Loki's arms like a bride, high off of the ground, and that the IV that had been in his arm is steadily squirting whatever had been being pumped into him onto the floor.

"Loki, I don't think-"

"Shut up-"

"Loki, how did you even-"

"Shut up-"

"Loki, how many impossible things do you expect me to witness without any explanation before I go completely insane-"

"Just three more."

"That's oddly specif-"

Tony falls silent as Loki hums and an icy cold spreads throughout his entire body. He gasps as it comes and goes, leaving him feeling better than he's felt in weeks.

"Loki, what-"

"Two more."

"God fucking d-"

"Close your eyes." Demands Loki. Of course Tony defies him.

The sight which greets him takes his breath away.

* * *

T3LL: Thanks! And to be honest, I keep trying to end it and it keeps not ending. There are at least three points over the course of this where I thought it was over and then at wasn't. Currently I believe that, at 237 pages in pages, this story is over. However, I might wake up tomorrow and realize that it isn't at all.

Stormy: I became a writer because I hurt inside, and writing is the only way that I can inflict that pain on others without being arrested.

Loki88: Thanks for keeping up with this madness.

hulky: Yeah. Pretty much. Shipping isn't shipping unless it gives you scurvy.

stil: In the words of the delicious Robert Downey Jr, 'They don't'. I realize that you probably won't see this response until the end of time, but welcome to my summer palace man, pull up a tapestry and a moat.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

DO YOU LIKE MY WRITING? WOULD YOU LIKE OT TAKE PART IN A COLLABORATIVE WRITING EXPERIMENT WITH ME? Check out fuckyoustephaniemeyer . tumblr . com to see what I'm doing and how we can do it together.

Good night and good pineapple.


	44. Chapter 44

Loki is shining and statuesque in every possible way as whirling darkness whips past them. It is like Loki's torn an eye in the middle of the blackest and most violent of storms and they are tearing through it in some direction or another.

Tony burrows closer to Loki, but he does not close his eyes.

He watches as the bare lines of a room form against the weight of the blackness, bursting through and swallowing it as a another of many hotel rooms forms beneath Loki's feet.

Even once it is indisputably there and corporeal Tony can't trust it, and when Loki tries to put him down he holds on even tighter.

"Welcome to Texas." Says Loki and when Tony tries to laugh he gasps and chokes and shakes instead. "It only bites a little."

Tony's heart is pounding and his eyes are open but he can't see.

"Sssshhh." Says Loki as he sits them down an an obnoxiously embossed gold divan. Tony burrows even closer.

"Someone didn't close their eyes." Chimes Loki softly and Tony only shivers. His head is pounding in time with his heart and his mouth is dry.

When Loki speaks a crisp wind insinuates itself between his lips and seems to slither through the very core of him to pool tingling and refreshing and soothing in his extremities.

"I wrote another song for you, Darling. It's not much without Wendy, but I think you should hear it now."

Tony's body is tingling and floating away and Loki's voice is sweeter than wine.

"My will is my word, without expensive twists and turns

Your heart is my gaol, the kind of worldly cup you'd find on a tarot card

And I don't know, what can turn a death merchant's soup to stone but I

fell from star to star to catch my breath in the lungs of a pageboy ghost

My lips are red, darling

My lips are red

Not yet overcome

Not yet overcome

My lips are red, darling

My lips are red

A seed of yours in me

Ekphrasis for three

My word is my will, a labyrinth wrapped around your finger

and making my own pieces takes sacred war from refugee to lord

And though I don't know why the winter wind marks your skin

In stone love orchard I'll kiss your lips red and gold my thread

My lips are red, darling

My teeth are red

And when I'm overcome

Will you know me for one

My teeth are red, darling

My teeth are red

And when I'm over come...

The song is not done, but Tony's asleep and his smile is soft and childlike.

And Loki is content to hold him.

* * *

Nev: While I can't happy, I also don't like to write things which are entirely predictable. SO I AIN'T TELLIN CHOO NOTTIN.

Fan: If this was a movie you should narrate the trailer. Glad you enjoy man!

Stormy: YES. AS A PRACTICING WITCH COULD I NOT? Then follow the blog and wait for the next collaborative edit mon frere. I want all of tumblr in on it.

FGS: Shady's back...tell a friend... And I'm sorry you weren't feeling well. Hopefully you're better by the time this moseys on over to you.

Loki: The shrieking of nothing is killing...

akuma: I kind of wrote this on the fly with no plans whatsoever, so it does get kind of weird sometimes, but it all happens organically, like one of those small town farmers that grows a giant ass tomato randomly and you are kind of impressed but also confused. At least, that's the reaction I seem to get from most people. Like they didn't want to eat this ass tomato I have grown and they were kind of suspicious of it at first but they've grown kind of attached to its strange deliciousness. And I think instead of a sequel to this, at least at first, I'm gonna write a Supernatural/Sherlock crossover that's been gestating in my brain. But if you like Johnlock and Destiel it will essentially be a parade of sexual frustration and agony for you. Writing it actually makes me horny and sad simultaneously. I don't really understand. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

DO YOU LIKE MY WRITING? WOULD YOU LIKE OT TAKE PART IN A COLLABORATIVE WRITING EXPERIMENT WITH ME? Check out fuckyoustephaniemeyer . tumblr . com to see what I'm doing and how we can do it together.

Good night and good pineapple.


	45. Chapter 45

SO. IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT SOME OF YOU DO NOT KNOW THE AGE OF FROST HAS BEEN MOVED TO AO3.

Well, I haven't abandoned it, and it's being continued there so if you have been waiting for an update and thought I abandoned this story I'm sorry.

But on the bright side there's like seven whole chapters you get to read all at once now!

It's still called AoF, but I'm BakerStreetMuse on there.

so have at it, happy reading, and I apologize for my managerial failure,


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